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Lil Wayne Pays Tribute To Kobe Bryant At BET Awards With A Special Performance

By Modupeoluwa Adekanye

29 June 2020   |   11:42 am

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Lil Wayne honored Kobe Bryant with a special performance at the 2020 BET Awards on Sunday. The rapper paid tribute to the late NBA superstar with a video highlighting some of his greatest moments on the court and backed with Wayne's 2009 track named for Bryant. Wayne included a tribute to Bryant on his latest…

Lil Wayne And Kobe Bryant

Lil Wayne honored Kobe Bryant with a special performance at the 2020 BET Awards on Sunday. The rapper paid tribute to the late NBA superstar with a video highlighting some of his greatest moments on the court and backed with Wayne’s 2009 track named for Bryant.

Wayne included a tribute to Bryant on his latest album Funeral, which came out just days after the NBA pro’s death. Referencing the MVP’s two NBA jersey numbers, Wayne had a 24-second moment of silence on the eighth track of the album.

Wayne added some special lyrics to the end of the song he performed:

This is Black power status/ Two fingers for the Mambacita/ I’m screamin’ Black Mamba matters. My heart goes out to Vanessa and the whole Black Mamba family. Rest in power/ Let’s hope for peace/ Black lives matter, facts.

Before Kobe’s death, Lil Wayne had always admired him. In an interview with MTV’s Fresh Out Live, he said:

What I admire the most is how [his legacy] evolved. We knew him as the kid phenom straight from high school. He hit the league and murked it, then he became a champion. It’s very hard to become a champion. He did it again and then again.

Kobe died in January along with 13-year-old daughter Gigi and seven other people in a helicopter accident. He was 41. Kobe is survived by wife Vanessa, 37, and daughters Natalia, 17, Bianka, three, and Capri, one.

Watch the performance below: