DJ Khaled Holds Up a Kobe Bryant Shirt on the Grammys Red Carpet: 'It's Hard to Even Celebrate'

DJ Khaled is showing his love for Mamba.

The rapper held up a vintage Kobe Bryant t-shirt on the 2020 Grammys red carpet, just hours after the basketball star tragically died, along with his 13-year-old daughter Gianna and seven others, in a helicopter crash. Bryant was 41, and leaves behind his wife Vanessa and three other daughters.

Khaled, who was already scheduled to do a tribute along with John Legend to the late rapper Nipsey Hussle, said they would also honor Bryant during the show.

“God is greatness, a blessing, but you know, especially when we doing a tribute for Nipsey Hussle,” he told host Ryan Seacrest during the E! Live from the Red Carpet show. “And we also want to pay homage and show love to Kobe Bryant, and his daughter, Gianna, the news is devastating.”

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Khaled, who welcomed his second son with longtime partner Nicole Tuck just a week earlier, admitted that “It’s hard to even celebrate” during the Grammys, “but what we’re gonna do is we’re gonna lift the spirits and pay homage and show love because, you know, like Nipsey would say, the marathon continues.”

Be sure to check out PEOPLE’s full Grammy Awards coverage to get the latest news on music’s biggest night.

Khaled said that Hussle, who was shot to death in March, made a huge impact on his and others’ lives.

“Nipsey was somebody who when they spoke, you would just listen,” Khaled said. “And he would always be the key. And I call it club talk but we always talk about family and uplifting people and being great leaders and entrepreneurship. He was just a good man, and he always had a lot of love that obviously the world felt that, that’s why we go so hard for our brothers. That’s Nipsey Hussle, he’s a king.”

Khaled is nominated tonight for best rap/sung performance for “Higher,” his song with Hussle and Legend. Hussle has already won a posthumous Grammy, his first, for best rap performance for his song “Racks in the Middle.”

PeopleTV’s PEOPLE Now host Jeremy Parsons, PEOPLE Senior Editor Janine Rubenstein and Entertainment Weekly Senior News Editor Gerrad Hall are co-hosting a live red carpet pre-show ahead of the awards ceremony. Catch the full livestream above at 6 p.m. ET/3 p.m. PT or on PEOPLE’s Facebook and Twitter pages. You can also watch on the PeopleTV app, available on all of your favorite streaming devices.