In case you didn't get the messages he left on your machine telling you about it, Kanye West has just given a textbook-crazy Kanye West interview (long; intermittently lucid; featuring a name drop of former Balenciaga creative director Nicolas Ghesquière) to the New York Times. You can read the gospel here.

When asked about his infamous Taylor Swift microphone grab, West declares the incident a product of an instinct that has "only led me to complete awesomeness at all times."

It’s only led me to awesome truth and awesomeness. Beauty, truth, awesomeness.

In a rant about the importance of accuracy to historical records, West complains that he has never won a Grammy against a white person, an interesting statistic that is also untrue.

I don’t know if this is statistically right, but I’m assuming I have the most Grammys of anyone my age, but I haven’t won one against a white person.

But the thing is, I don’t care about the Grammys; I just would like for the statistics to be more accurate.

Among the Grammys he has won against competition from white artists: his very first, in 2005. (He beat the Beastie Boys for Best Rap Album.)

You want the historical record to be right.

Yeah, I don’t want them to rewrite history right in front of us. At least, not on my clock.

Perhaps the most quintessential Kanye moment, though, is when he explains (in the third person), the relationship between himself and Steve Jobs. Specifically: that while Steve Jobs was the Steve Jobs of Apple, Kanye West is the Steve Jobs of literally everything.

I think what Kanye West is going to mean is something similar to what Steve Jobs means. I am undoubtedly, you know, Steve of Internet, downtown, fashion, culture. Period. By a long jump. I honestly feel that because Steve has passed, you know, it’s like when Biggie passed and Jay-Z was allowed to become Jay-Z.

He also reveals that he offered to storm the Grammy stage and grab the microphone from the Dixie Chicks in 2007, when Justin Timberlake lost to them for Album of the Year. ("I am so credible and so influential and so relevant that I will change things.")

And he calls himself a nucleus.

[NYT // Image via Getty]

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