Celebrities like Cardi B, Ed Sheeran, and BLACKPINK's Rosé gave a special message to the 2025 graduates of Northeastern University, Massachusetts, during their graduation ceremony on May 11, 2025. The ceremony, held at Fenway Park, was hosted for this year's graduating class, which consists of 5,596 graduate students and 6,493 undergraduates.
Amid the graduation, the celebrities delivered their pre-recorded special messages, which were played on the screens as Rosé's hit song APT played in the background. The K-Pop star wished the graduates well as they "start this next chapter," while Sheeran hoped that the graduates would "have a good time."
Meanwhile, the Bodak Yellow rapper spoke about welcoming the graduates to the real world, saying:
"I hope you guys now enjoy the real world, cos college and the real world is very different."
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Cardi B's message for Northeastern University's class of 2025 was met with diverse responses from netizens, with one user writing:
"Imagine taking advice from Cardi B."
Several users seemingly trolled Cardi B for delivering the special message, dubbing it "peak simulation."
"Imagine graduating and cardi b is the one giving you advice ijbol," one user posted.
"Cardi B giving college grads advice is peak simulation. 'Just keep it real and twerk through the system' might be the real diploma," another person added.
"Using Cardi B to send motivational messages to people is just sad, I hope someone didn’t write this for her," someone else commented.
Others wondered how much money the university spent on the celebrities for their special messages.
"I mean this is iconic but I wonder how much money they spent on these messages," one user wrote.
"The point?? clearly they’ve got money to waste," another person added.
However, some netizens praised the university's gesture, calling it sweet and cool.
"This is such a sweet surprise for the graduates!!" one netizen exclaimed.
"That’s so cool! What a star-studded message for the grads!" another user added.
"It's never too late to make your dreams come true" — Cardi B when asked about returning to college
Cardi B graduated from Renaissance High School for Musical Theater and Technology in 2010. Following her graduation, she was enrolled at Borough of Manhattan Community College. However, she dropped out due to financial constraints and became an adult dancer to make ends meet.
In 2018, she released her Grammy-winning debut LP, Invasion of Privacy. Following her success as a rapper, Cardi expressed her desire to return to college in a 2019 interview with The Red Bulletin.
“Maybe when I’m older I’ll have the time to go to college. Why not? It’s never too late to make your dreams come true. Sometimes it’s just a matter of juggling things to create the right atmosphere and the perfect conditions,” she said.
During an April 2019 appearance at Beautycon, she urged her fans to take a business class in college if they had dreams of starting and managing a business in the future.
The rapper revealed that she had wanted to take a business class but decided against it after learning the course required math, which she did not like. However, she warned her fans against making the same mistakes she made, saying:
“I wanted to take a business class, but I didn’t because I had to take a math class for it and I was like, ‘Oh no, I hate math, I am not going to do it.' Always take a business class because sometimes, the career that you study for one day is not going to make you happy and you want to become your own boss, but you can not be your own boss because you don’t know how to manage a business.”
In other news, Cardi B is gearing up for the release of her highly anticipated sophomore LP and has promised fans some exciting features. The rapper has been teasing the untitled project for years now. However, she assured fans that it was slated for release sometime this year. As of this article, she has not announced a release date for the upcoming album.
