Kanye West's comeback media blitz continues apace, with the rapper announcing an album that aspires to the standard of James Cameron's Avatar. West staged an impromptu video chat from his hotel room in Korea, showing off new clothes, new music and, er, photographs of unicorns.

The unscheduled webcast came as West was "killing time" before a flight. With the sun rising over his hotel balcony, he issued the invitation on Twitter, telling followers: "I'm bout to get on to answer questions and chip away at my mystique one humanising question at a time." He then spent 25 minutes on video service UStream, taking hundreds of questions from fans – and answering only a handful.

West said his fifth album will "be dropping sometime in November". Previously known as Good Ass Job, West is now "bouncing a couple of titles around", including Dark Twisted Fantasy. He calls the album "a progression", pointing to the multi-year "masterplans" of film director Cameron and the late fashion designer Alexander McQueen. "When I make music, I'm not really thinking of other rapper's albums," he said. "I'm trying to make my music compete with that McQueen collection. I'm not saying it does; I'm just saying that is the goal ... Hopefully this album – if not this album, then the next album – will be [my] masterwork. That Avatar-level [work]."

"I try to compete against the past," West said. "I think Michelangelo, Picasso, the pyramids. That's the reason I put like 5,000 hours into a song like [new single] Power. What we're doing in this era is light work compared to ... past monuments."

As he continues to challenge himself, West is also trying to work with "more abstraction". "Things on the radio ... almost seem too clear to me," he said. "When I listen to Thom Yorke or Trent Reznor I don't understand everything they're saying the first time, but I feel it, I feel the emotion of it, I feel the artistry in it. To take what I feel is that level, and bring it to radio, is an extremely important task. And I don't take that lightly."

Before he turned serious, reflecting on profundity, longevity and Egyptian architecture, West showed fans some impressive photos on his laptop, including unicorns, angels and a shot of "Kate Moss with nothin' [on] ". West claims to have "thousands of these photographs", which he posts to his blog and uses for inspiration in the studio. Working on the new album with producers such as RZA, Pete Rock, Q-Tip and S1, he also shows movies above the mixing desk – including Children of Men, Avatar and There Will Be Blood.

With West's new video, Power, out now, the next single will be released "in about 20 days". He is still choosing between songs called Lost in the World and All of the Lights, playing a sample of the latter. In the webcast's closing moments, West answered an online critic who accused him of being racist. "I actually don't know a rapper before me that liked white people more than me," he said. "I don't know a rapper that wore tighter jeans."