I’d originally hoped to cover this in Last Days, but I ran out of room, so I’ll cover it properly here: This past Saturday, I was one of the many people who crowded into the Everett Events Center to see Kanye West and it was fucking amazing.

West put on a hell of a show, complete with artsy video projections, a six-piece string section (the leader of which danced like mad during all string-free numbers), some klutzy theatrics (West delivered the grandma-in-peril number “Roses” from beside an empty hospital bed), gold confetti raining from the ceiling, and virtually every song the audience could’ve hoped to hear (a dozen from Late Registration, eight from The College Dropout, plus a spin through Jay-Z’s West-produced “Encore.”)

But what I’ll remember even more fondly is the afternoon meet-n-greet West held with students from Tacoma’s High School for the Arts, to which journalists were invited but not allowed to participate. I thought about hitting up one of the kids to put my dream questions to West, but as it worked out, during his hourlong talk, West naturally hit upon every subject I would’ve wanted to question him about.

Among the highlights: West holding forth on the backlash to his comments against homophobia in hiphop (which, as he tells it, led to the revocation of his "ghetto pass" by black folks who assumed his defense of the gays signified his own homosexuality); West openly discussing his post-Katrina bashing of Bush (after which West's ghetto pass was reportedly reissued, "because everyone agreed with me then"); West sharing his theories on the origin of AIDS (he truly does believe the government injected the virus into undesirables though flu shots and blood transfusions) and West happily discussing himself and his much-vaunted greatness.

West's humongous ego is only one of the traits that align him with '60s Ali, and like Ali, he's ready to support any boast he makes. As West told us explicitly: He believes God saved him from his near-fatal car crash (chronicled in his first solo smash "Through the Wire," which West rapped through his wired-shut jaw) to fulfill a mission on earth, and to West, any hint of polite or affected modesty is an affront to God. Weird—but powerful Christians with soft spots for gays and the downtrodden are just the type of Christians we could use more of. (And if West keeps making records as good as Late Registration and College Dropout, I'd be willing to cultivate a Jesus complex on his behalf.)