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Jay-Z is reflecting on his friendship with Kobe Bryant, less than two weeks after the basketball great died in a helicopter crash.

The former Lakers star was last at the rapper’s home on New Year’s “and he was just in the greatest space that I’ve seen him in,” the Brooklyn native revealed this week during the Columbia University lecture series he launched Tuesday.

“One of the last things he said to me was, ‘You gotta see Gianna play basketball.’ And that was one of the most hurtful things, because he was so proud,” the entrepreneur recalled, referring to Bryant’s daughter, who died with her father.

“I looked at him and said, ‘Oh, she is going to be the best female basketball player in the world,'” Jay-Z said. “He was just so proud. … So that’s really a tough one. And my wife and I … [are] taking that really tough. That’s all I’ll say on that.”

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The “Run This Town” rapper kicked off his lecture series, the “Shawn ‘JAY-Z’ Carter Lecture Series” at the Manhattan-based university Tuesday, which will happen once a year and dig into topics close to the artist and Columbia’s African-American and African Diaspora Studies Department.

At the series, Jay-Z was asked to discuss his relationship with the late NBA star, who he said “was just a great human being and was in a great space in his life.”

Bryant, 41, and his 13-year-old daughter were among the nine people who died on Jan. 26 in the heartbreaking accident near Calabasas, Calif.