AceShowbiz - Rapper G-Eazy is always inspired to be "great" whenever he steps into his home recording studio, thanks to an autographed note and gift from his basketball "hero", Kobe Bryant.

The "No Limit" hitmaker has opened the doors to his Los Angeles home for Architectural Digest readers, giving them a tour of his 1979 Spanish colonial property, which boasts a custom two-storey recording studio.

The second level of the work area features a lounge and neon lights, where a framed jersey from the late Los Angeles Lakers legend hangs on a wall, alongside an autographed note which reads, "Do the phenomenal".

"Kobe Bryant was my hero," he said. "This was a birthday present a couple years ago, before he passed."

"I'd met him after a game, and the first thing he says to me [was], 'Yo, young Elvis!' Then he told me to chase The Beatles and to never give up and to just always want to be great and remember that Mamba mentality," G-Eazy recalled, referencing Kobe's alter ego, Black Mamba, inspired by 2003 action film "Kill Bill", in which the snake was code for a deadly assassin.

"Imagine walking past that everyday you walk into the studio," the hip-hop star shared of the special gift. "How could you not want to be great?"

G-Eazy spent many months of the 2020 COVID-19 shutdown locked away alone in the studio, working on new material for his upcoming album, "These Things Happen Too", but having to tinker with the equipment himself was a big learning curve.

"At first, nobody was seeing anybody, so it was just me down here," he explained. "I had to reteach myself how to engineer again. I had to reteach myself how to produce most of my music again. So, it's literally just me down here in this room, sitting at that keyboard, making music from scratch."

His forthcoming release wasn't the only project recorded at the home studio - it's also where he crafted much of his 2017 project, "The Beautiful & Damned".