After reading Kanye West's University of Oxford lecture (oh how we wish there was a video!), we remember why initially fell in love with the rapper's message. He's bold, he's funny, and even if you don't agree with what he has to say, you have to admire his enthusiam. Of course, Kanye also made a number of completely ridiculous comments, but for the most part he redeemed himself when he spoke at the prestigious university last night.

Only a few photos of Kanye have made their way online, but lucky for us, Oxford's student newspaper, The Tab, posted the full transcript on their website. Highlights?
  • "People say it takes a village to raise a child. People ask me how my daughter is doing. She's only doing good if your daughter's doing good. We're all one family. We have the ability to approach our race like ants, or we have the ability to approach our race like crabs."

  • "Clothing should be like food. There should never be a $5,000 sweater. You know what should cost $5,000? A car should be $5,000. 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."

  • "I was exiled from my country, it was a personal exile, but exile. To come back and deliver my magnum opus of a work, and to be out-shined…to be beat by a girl [Nicki Minaj], basically. This was necessary. I think it was one of the most important points of working on that album, was to not stop her from her moment because of how good she is."

  • "Some of you here probably remember the night when the Donda [his creative agency] tweets came through me and I started talking about professions that you guys are going into, that seemed they had nothing to do with a rapper. I was talking about a band of thinkers that could remove religion, race, gender, and somehow come together to find solutions for a broken planet. We have the resources as a civilization to find a utopia, but we're led by the most greedy and the least noble."

  • "My goal, if I was going to do art, fine art, would have been to become Picasso or greater. That always sounds so funny to people, comparing yourself to someone in the past that has done so much, and in your life you're not even allowed to think that you can do as much. That's a mentality that suppresses humanity."

  • "People say I have a bad reputation. I think I've got the best reputation in the building. They want you to have a reputation of tucking your black nail polish into your pockets and sitting in the corner of the class, and not fighting for your ideas out of fear of being ridiculed. That's one of my favorite ones ... to be called crazy."

Of course, the best quote came at the end of the night when Yeezy admitted that he has a pretty big head. Yeezy told the crowd, "One of my biggest Achilles' heels has been my ego. And if I, Kanye West, the very person, can remove my ego, I think there's hope for everyone."

Tell us: After reading this, has your opinion of the rapper changed at all?