b. Leonard Albert Kravitz, 26 May 1964, New York City, New Yok, USA. Kravitz’s family ties - his Jewish father was a top television producer for NBC; his Bahamian mother Roxie Roker an actress - suggested a future in showbusiness. As a teenager he attended the Beverly Hills High School where his contemporaries included Slash, later of Guns N’Roses, and Maria McKee of Lone Justice. Kravitz’s interest in music flourished in the mid-80s and he signed a recording contract with I.R.S. Records under the moniker Romeo Blue. The contract eventually fell through, but in 1987 the singer (now using his real name) completed the first of several demos that concluded with an early version of Let Love Rule. These recordings engendered a contract with Virgin Records America, but the company was initially wary of Kravitz’s insistence that the finished product should only feature ‘real’ instruments - guitar, bass, keyboards and drums - rather than digital and computerized passages. Although denigrated in some quarters as merely retrogressive, notably in its indebtedness to Jimi Hendrix, Let Love Rule proved highly popular.
Kravitz then gained greater success when Madonna recorded ‘Justify My Love’, a new, rap-influenced composition co-written with Ingrid Chavez and quite unlike his previous work. In 1991, the artist continued his unconventional path by writing a new arrangement to John Lennon’s ‘Give Peace A Chance’ as a comment on the impending Gulf War. The resultant recording, credited to the Peace Choir, featured several contemporaries, including Yoko Ono and Sean Lennon. The latter musician also appeared on the same year’s Mama Said, wherein Kravitz’s flirtation with 60s and early 70s rock was even more apparent. The set spawned the US Top 5/UK Top 20 hit ‘It Ain’t Over ’Til It’s Over’, a kiss-off to his soon to be ex-wife, actress Lisa Bonet. The prolific Kravitz then wrote an entire album for French chanteuse Vanessa Paradis, and collaborated with artists as diverse as Curtis Mayfield, Aerosmith and Mick Jagger.
The hard rocking title track of 1993’s Are You Gonna Go My Way was another worldwide success, breaking into the UK Top 5. The album eventually racked up double platinum status in the USA. The 1995 follow-up Circus featured a stripped-down version of his trademark sound, displaying his talent as a writer of more contemporary sounding material rather than the 60s pastiches of his earlier albums. The belated 1998 release, 5, saw Kravitz embracing digital recording and attempting a more relaxed fusion of soul and hip-hop styles. The singer topped the UK charts in February 1999 with ‘Fly Away’, thanks to the song’s extensive media exposure as the soundtrack to a Peugeot car advertisement. The track had earned Kravitz his first Grammy Award in 1998, for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance. He repeated the feat in 1999 with his cover version of the Guess Who’s ‘American Woman’, taken from the soundtrack of the movie Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. A bestselling compilation featured the new track ‘Again’, which provided the singer with his third Grammy Award. The collection preceded the release of Kravitz’s sixth studio album, the succinctly titled Lenny (2001). The album garnered the artist his best reviews since Mama Said, while the single ‘Dig In’ earned Kravitz his fourth Grammy Award for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance.
In 2003, Kravitz teamed up with Warner Brothers Records to launch his own Roxie Records imprint. His new studio album, Baptism, was released the following May, but was a notable critical and commercial failure in comparison to his previous recordings. He spent the next few years concentrating on his Kravitz Design firm, although he continued to tour and record new material.
