How Lil Wayne helped a struggling London girl get through college
Joy Bonfield-Colombara, an art student, was struggling. Her course at London’s Royal College of Art was extremely expensive, and, because she was finding it so difficult to pay her fees, she was reluctantly considering dropping out. But then, out of the blue, her studies were inadvertently rescued by Lil Wayne and his desire for finery.
Bonfield-Colombara, who makes jewelry, was really beginning to despair about her prospects of being able to pay for her course. “I was thinking I can’t afford this,” she told the BBC in 2018. “The whole time I was questioning whether I should do it. But I’m really enjoying the course.”
The student had taken out a government loan to help with expenses, while her mother took out a bank loan for additional help. Bonfield-Colombara also set up a GoFundMe page, but, even with all of that, she still needed to find around £10,000 if she was going to be able to continue with her studies. It seemed unlikely.
“Then I got this email,” she recalled. “I couldn’t believe it.”
The email that unexpectedly arrived in Bonfield-Colombara’s inbox had come from a friend of Lil Wayne, whose 36th birthday was coming up. The friend wanted to get Wayne a gift, so they were wondering if they could commission Bonfield-Colombara to create a gold pendant that resembled the wealthy rapper. They were willing to pay thousands for it.
Bonfield-Colombara, naturally, was shocked. “I listened to hip hop from a young age,” she remarked to the BBC. “I used to listen to [Wayne] in the club!”
Bonfield-Colombara carved her jewelry by hand, so, naturally, it took a long time to create each piece. There was a deadline of only a few weeks, though, so that left her “freaking out.” But she had to accept the commission, given that there were thousands of pounds on offer.
The 18-carat gold pendant that she fashioned, in the end, was shaped like Wayne’s face, with two diamonds being used to represent his teardrop tattoos. It was an impressive piece.
While the payment she received for her efforts did not cover the entirety of her course fees, it did, in her words, account for a “chunk.” It was a lifeline for her studies, courtesy of a famous rapper’s taste for the extravagant.