No, rapper Lil Pump is not Harvard’s commencement speaker. What were people thinking?

For a very confusing while on Monday, media outlets tried to find out if this “news” from Warner Bros. was fake: Rapper Lil Pump will deliver this year’s commencement address at Harvard University.

You know, Harvard. That Harvard.

You know, Lil Pump, the 18-year-old rapper with 17.7 million Instagram followers considered “one of the most recognizable faces from the new school of rap” by Complex pop culture website.

This Lil Pump.

“Sit down, you guys, because there’s some big news in the education and rap world,” Cosmopolitan reported Monday. “Apparently, according to Warner Bros., rapper Lil Pump will address Harvard graduates this spring at their commencement ceremony. It’s such a weird and confusing surprise.”

The announcement fit Pump’s “narrative.”

“Despite having dropped out of high school, rapper Lil Pump has — for the last two years — cultivated the rumor that he went to Harvard,” according to Esquire magazine.

“The rumor began in 2017 when Pump randomly tweeted: “I REALLY DID DROP OUT OF HARVARD TO SAVE THE RAP GAME” (he didn’t). Since then, Pump has done his best to incorporate this into his own rap mythology. Doubling down on the rumor, Pump even titled his new album Harverd Dropout.”

Yes, it’s spelled “Harverd.”

The press release from Warner Bros. prompted media outlets, including political website, The Hill, to call Harvard straightaway.

“As previously announced, Angela Merkel will be Harvard’s Commencement 2019 speaker,” the university told The Hill.

You know, the German chancellor. That Angela Merkel.

Lil Pump is no Angela Merkel.

His real name is Gazzy Garcia, according to an “everything you need to know about him” story from Complex last year, and he’s “owned the news cycle ever since he burst onto the scene two years ago.”

“A laid-back, monotonous, lean-and-Xanax-fueled South Florida rapper,” Complex wrote, “Pump has a penchant for entertaining online masses and infuriating the rest. He’s a poster child of SoundCloud rap, and one of detractors’ main targets. He’s everywhere on the internet, from news releases to Twitter feeds to Instagram Live.”

He is often held up as an example of “all that is wrong with rap today,” the website wrote. “Associated with Xanax and drug usage ... he’s received criticism for both his glorification of drugs and his disdain for any form of advanced lyricism.”

If this had all somehow been true, Lil Pump would not have been the first rapper to ever drop words of wisdom on graduates.

Kanye West, Chance the Rapper and Sean “Diddy” Combs have all done it, according to Hypebeast men’s magazine.

“Many major colleges and universities have selected rappers to give graduation speeches in recent years, whether those musicians were graduates of the school or not,” Hypebeast, a men’s magazine, wrote.

This story was originally published February 26, 2019 at 9:22 AM.