UPDATE: The whole thing is now up on YouTube.

Yesterday afternoon, Kanye West spoke at the Oxford University Museum of Natural History. The event, hosted by the Oxford Guild Society, was announced late on Sunday night, and tickets were allocated to Oxford University students via an online ballot system. Kanye’s visit to Oxford comes after a stint of UK appearances, including his performance at the Brit Awards and an emotional interview with Zane Lowe.

In this talk, Kanye spoke vociferously about wealth, privilege and exclusivity – “exclusivity is the new n-word, nothing should be exclusive” – making his appearance at the university all the more significant. Predictably, the event was hugely oversubscribed and out of around five thousand ticket applicants, the Yeezy god(s) shone on a lucky 350 students. Charismatic and intelligent, here’s what Yeezus taught us:

LET HIM GET IN HIS ZONE

After having a table removed from the stage to make the space “aesthetically better” (his words), Kanye began by asking the audience to ask him questions, questions for him to riff off. He prefaced this with a plea to the audience not to whisper, stating that the quietest sound was enough to interrupt his stream of consciousness. The first question, centred on his aesthetic progression from The College Dropout to Yeezus, turned out to be the only question, and Kanye’s stream of consciousness flowed without pause for a full forty minutes, serving up, as promised, “the best, illest quotes”.

WE'RE ALL ARTISTS

Never one to shirk some serious self-love, Kanye’s speech was a testament to his belief that everyone should love themselves, and everyone should have belief in their potential as artists, creators and innovators. He also went on to say that people should stop feeling scared of their ideas being mocked, or being deemed a failure. This probably wasn’t directed at Beck. 

"We’re all creatives here," he said, "we’re all born artists. Some people are artists of business, some people are artists of composition. We were taught to hide our black fingernail polish and put our head down in the back of the class and not notice out of fear that someone might laugh at one of our ideas – that our idea could become a mockery or a failure in some way."

"OBAMA – HE CALLS THE HOME PHONE"

Of course he does.

COLLABORATION IS THE ONLY WAY TO MEANINGFUL SUCCESS

Citing critics’ proclamations that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy was the best album of the last 25 years (and enthusiastically agreeing with them), Kanye insisted on the importance of collaboration in the hope of artistic progression. In particular, he acknowledged Nicki Minaj’s legendary "Monster" verse on the album, claiming that she “kicked my ass, on my own album”. In fact, Kanye’s emphasis on collaboration extended far beyond the context of the music industry, and it was an underlying theme throughout, bridging the gap between his art and his philosophy. Paraphrasing Lennon, he asked us to imagine a world without war, in which the main focus of people’s lives would be to help someone else: “This future utopia will only happen through collaboration”.  

WE'RE NOT DONE WITH "ISMS"

Yeezy was at his most passionate and astute when discussing class and the perils of consumerism. "There’s still something you’re taught every day," he said, "especially in the UK, and that’s division by class."

"Clothing should be like food," he argued. "There should never be a $5000 sweater. You know what should cost $5000? A car should be $5000. And you know who should work on the car? The people that work on the $500,000 cars. All the best talent in the world needs to work for the people. And I am so fucking serious about this concept that I will stand in front of anyone and fight for it. Because I was 14 and middle class. I know what it felt like to not get what I have."

Though the reason for Kanye’s talk at Oxford was never explicitly addressed – I mean, duh, he doesn’t need one – the abrupt ending to his stream of consciousness was revealing. After declaring earlier on that “my favourite thing to hate is class”, it would be wrong to ignore the context in which his final words were spoken: “People say to me ‘you’re successful, what are you crying about?’. I’m crying about the people. I’m crying about their daughters. Our daughters, as one family. What good is it. What good is anything that everyone can’t have. Every 'ism'. They think we’re done with racism. What about elitism, what about separatism, what about classism? That’s all.”