During a February Sunday Service Choir performance in Miami, Kanye West told a crowd of onlookers that Kobe Bryant especially loved the song "All Day," released in 2015.

West and Bryant were longtime friends, with a bond that went far beyond the memorable Nike commercials they starred in together. For GQ's May cover story, editor in chief Will Welch interviewed West on multiple occasions in a series of far-reaching conversations that included the 42-year-old's relationship with the Lakers legend, who tragically died in a helicopter crash in January 2020.

Kanye West: "One thing I thought was really amazing is that we were able to find a groove with the photographs today even as out of it as I was with the loss of Kobe. We were able to just go to the court and play ball. There’s one street that I drive to go from either my office or my home to the property where the domes were built. [Editor’s note: The street is Las Virgenes Road, the site of the helicopter crash that killed Kobe Bryant and eight other people just four days prior.] So now there’s no way for me not to be as determined as Kobe every time I drive down that street. It’s game time. There’s no move that we can’t make, or that we’ll wait to make.

"Everyone in our life is now a member of the Lakers on one of Kobe’s championship teams. The way that Kobe would say that we all have to come together and win this championship is the way I look at life now. To an infinite, other level. This is a game changer for me. He was the basketball version of me, and I was the rap version of him, and that’s facts! We got the commercials that prove it. No one else can say this. We came up at the same time, together. And now it’s like, yeah, I might have had a reputation for screaming about things—but I’m not taking any mess for an answer now. We’re about to build a paradigm shift for humanity. We ain’t playing with ’em. We bringing home the trophies."

Read the full GQ cover story—including Kanye on his next album, the "massive single-family dome dwellings" he's designing, his public political stances—for more.