Music

Leonard Albert Kravitz was born in 1964, the only child of Black actress Roxie Roker and Jewish NBC news producer Sy Kravitz. Over the next few decades, he grew up to be one of his generation’s most iconic rock stars, befriending idols like Prince and Michael Jackson and dating an array of glamorous actresses and models. Transitioning into acting, he played key supporting roles in hits like Precious and the Hunger Games franchise.

Beneath all the glitz and glamor of Lenny Kravitz’s jet setting lifestyle, his talent is sometimes overlooked. Kravitz has self-produced all 12 of his albums, playing every instrument on many tracks, and often puts his spirituality and social conscience front and center in his lyrics. Kravitz famously wears his influences on his sleeve, but he’s demonstrated remarkable versatility in his ability to channel just about every style of rock and soul of the ’60s and ’70s, winning four Grammys and selling 40 million records along the way.

In September, Virgin Records released an expanded 30th anniversary reissue of 1995’s Circus. Kravitz’s fourth album was considered a disappointment at the time of its release, but is it actually one of his best?

12. Strut (2014)

For most of the last two decades, Kravitz has been vocal about being celibate, occasionally telling interviewers he’s abstaining from sex until he remarries for religious reasons. The one period in which he wavered from that position was around the time he released Strut, which opens with a song called “Sex” (“I’m just a slave for your pleasure and I’m waiting to pop”). Strut may be more lyrically occupied with carnal desire than any other Kravitz album, but its formulaic arena rock doesn’t sound particularly seductive. The most memorable moment from Strut’s promotional cycle was X-rated but purely accidental: Kravitz went viral when his leather pants split open at the crotch during a 2015 concert in Sweden.

11. Baptism (2004)

Kravitz spent some time in the studio with Michael Jackson in 1999, although the song they made together, “(I Can’t Make It) Another Day,” wouldn’t see release until 2010, after Jackson’s death. In the meantime, Kravitz retooled the song as the Baptism single “Storm” featuring Jay-Z. Kravitz was briefly engaged to actress Nicole Kidman in 2004, although the lyrics about her on “Lady,” his last Top 40 hit, are pure drivel (“I know she’s a super lady / I’m weak and I’ve gone hazy”). Instead, Baptism is at its most compelling when Kravitz sounds disillusioned with fame and show business on “I Don’t Want to be a Star,” “Flash,”  and “The Other Side.” “If an element of humor or self-deprecation were evident, the results would be funny—a guilty-pleasure romp. But here’s the problem: Kravitz is completely and utterly straight-faced about every single aspect of what he does,” David Browne wrote in the Entertainment Weekly review of Baptism.

10. Raise Vibration (2018)

Michael Jackson makes a posthumous cameo on “Low,” the Raise Vibration single that features a sumptuous Off the Wall-style disco groove and some immediately identifiable “Hoo!” ad libs from the King of Pop. And “Gold Dust” is one of those most creative and rhythmically intricate tracks in Kravitz’s catalog. Unfortunately, the album otherwise rarely sounds that good, with irritations like a chorus of children’s voices on the vapid “5 More Days ’Til Summer” and the facile political commentary of “It’s Enough!” (“What’s that going down in the Middle East? Do you really think it’s to keep the peace?”).

9. It Is Time For a Love Revolution (2008)

Kravitz plays most of the drums on his albums, and It Is Time For a Love Revolution is his pinnacle as a percussionist as he nails a taut James Brown groove on “Will You Marry Me” and plays behind the beat with the grace of Charlie Watts on “Dancin’ Til Dawn.” Unfortunately, the album is also a low point for Kravitz as a lyricist. “Love Love Love” is the closest he’s ever come to rapping, and it’s not pretty (“I want you to know I’m emphatic/ About your love that’s enigmatic”). And on “Good Morning,” Kravitz even seems to bore himself imagining the workaday lives of people with 9-to-5 jobs.

8. Black and White America (2011)

Kravitz confronted racism on one of his earliest songs, 1989’s “Mr. Cab Driver,” but he didn’t decide to explore the topic of race for an entire album until after the 2008 election of President Barack Obama. Kravitz initially recorded his ninth album under the working title Negrophilia before settling on Black and White America. On the title track, he sings about his parents’ interracial marriage in 1963, and how it wasn’t safe for them to walk down the street together at the time. “Sunflower” is one of the album’s more straightforward love songs, but it features a verse from Drake, another superstar with one Black parent and one Jewish parent. “Each of these 16 songs succeeds on its own terms, which is a vision for America beyond the black and white divide,” Anthony DeCurtis wrote in the Rolling Stone review of Black and White America.

7. Lenny (2001)

A successful best-of compilation can be a blessing or a curse, boosting an artist’s profile for future projects or putting a cap on their hitmaking days. Unfortunately for Kravitz, his triple platinum 2000 Greatest Hits package was the latter, with its new track “Again” becoming his last inescapable single. Lenny’s lead single “Dig In” earned Kravitz his fourth and final Grammy win, all in the category of Best Male Rock Vocal Performance, but its monotonous chug didn’t make much of an impact on the charts. Kravitz, who often shares lead guitar duties with longtime sideman Craig Ross, plays some of his finest guitar solos on several tracks on Lenny, including a lively talkbox section on “God Save Us All.” And “Believe in Me,” with its fidgety drum machine groove and Minimoog synth lines, actually sounds like Kravitz was taking some cues from hip-hop producers like Timbaland.

6. Blue Electric Light (2024)

In 2024, Lenny Kravitz turned 60, began his first Las Vegas residency, and was nominated for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. He also, surprisingly, released one of the most creatively vital and contemporary-sounding albums of his career. Kravitz’s last few albums have been recorded at Gregory Town Sound, the studio he built on the beach in the Bahamas. And with songs like the electro funk banger “TK421” and the sinuous slow jam “Stuck in the Middle,” Blue Electric Light is the album that most sounds like Kravitz is just enjoying himself with jam sessions in a tropical paradise.

5. 5 (1998)

5 underperformed at first, with the initial rollout focusing on the sleek R&B of “If You Can’t Say No” and “I Belong To You.” It was only after one of the album’s only guitar-heavy rockers, “Fly Away,” was promoted as a single six months after 5’s release that the album really started to sell. A cover of the Guess Who’s “American Woman,” recorded for the Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me soundtrack, was added to later editions of 5, helping Kravitz reach a new level of ubiquity. Kravitz’s longtime drummer Cindy Blackman Santana is frequently seen in his music videos and concerts, but “Straight Cold Player” is the only time she’s actually gotten to lay down a deep groove on one of his studio tracks. “Here we are on the brink of the millennium, but nobody’s told Lenny Kravitz, who’s still cranking out pedestrian Prince-style glam funk like it’s 1978,” Paul Lukas wrote in the SPIN review of 5.

4. Are You Gonna Go My Way (1993)

Craig Ross joined Kravitz’s band for the tour in support of Mama Said, and has become Kravitz’s most consistent collaborator on every subsequent album. Ross co-wrote Are You Gonna Go My Way’s smash hit title track and played all of the song’s dazzling interlocked guitar lines. “Is There Any Love In Your Heart” is the only other song on the album with the same kind of irresistible hard rock hooks as Kravitz chases one of his most persistent muses, the dry drums and reverbed vocals of John Lennon’s early solo albums. “Sugar,” however, is a soulful delight that probably could’ve been a crossover hit like “It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over.”

3. Let Love Rule (1989)

Lenny Kravitz was going by the stage name Romeo Blue in 1987 when he eloped in Las Vegas with The Cosby Show star Lisa Bonet on her 20th birthday. He became a tabloid fixture before the world had heard a note of his music, and a label bidding war ensued with Virgin Records eventually signing Kravitz, who decided to make music under his real name. Bonet wrote lyrics for two songs on Let Love Rule and appeared in the video for the title track, helping make it a modest hit. Despite all the media hoopla, Let Love Rule is an uncompromising self-produced debut that stands apart from even the other strains of neo-psychedelic ’60s nostalgia that were on the charts in the late ’80s.

2. Circus (1995)

Circus is the dark horse of Kravitz’s catalog. His mother was dying of cancer during the difficult recording sessions, and it’s the only album from the first decade of his career that performed below expectations and didn’t win him a significant number of new fans. But it rocks more consistently than any other Kravitz release and has a thunderous drum sound, perhaps the best faux-Led Zeppelin album since Billy Squier’s Don’t Say No. Kravitz headlined the 1996 H.O.R.D.E. tour in support of Circus, and songs like “Tunnel Vision” and “Can’t Get You Off My Mind” sounded great the only time I’ve seen him live. “Yeah, on Circus, Lenny Kravitz proves himself to be just as much a purveyor of record collection rock as he’s ever been. But what most people fail to notice is that Len has got stone-cold impeccable taste,” Paul Moody wrote in the NME review of the album.

1. Mama Said (1991)

Kravitz co-wrote and co-produced Madonna’s provocative chart-topper “Justify My Love” in 1990, and followed it a few months later with his biggest solo hit. “It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over” borrowed a quirky neologism from the baseball legend Yogi Berra, turning it into a plea to Kravitz’s estranged wife. The song didn’t save their marriage—he and Bonet divorced in 1993—but it remains his finest soul song, with a silky, expressive vocal and a lush arrangement that includes the Phenix Horns from Earth, Wind & Fire. “Flowers for Zoë” is another beautiful song on Mama Said that he wrote for their daughter, actress Zoë Kravitz. The era’s other most prominent biracial rock star was Slash of Guns N’ Roses, who went to high school with Kravitz and played on the first two tracks on Mama Said. And it’s hard not to wish that the two friends made a lot more funk rock masterpieces together after “Always on the Run.”