Lenny Kravitz: Mama Said : Music Reviews : Rolling Stone

Album Reviews

New artists often flaunt their influences, but few do so with the intensity that Lenny Kravitz displayed on his 1989 debut, Let Love Rule. Drawing on the legacies of artists ranging from John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix to Sly Stone, Kravitz offered a sound and a message that evoked the guitar-drenched, peace-loving psychedelia of the late Sixties so unabashedly that it approached fixation. The good news, then, is that Kravitz has discovered the Seventies. On Mama Said, which alludes to a wider array of musical styles than its predecessor did, he offers a collection of new material that is, like much of his first effort, richly textured, movingly executed and maddeningly derivative.

After "Fields of Joy," an opening cut that segues from a gentle acoustic intro into a searing burst of electric guitar, much of the first half of Mama Said plays like a sampling of black pop circa, say, 1972. "Always on the Run," written with Guns n' Roses guitarist Slash, is a bit of horn-tinged funk wrapped around a riff similar to that used by Stevie Wonder in "Superstition"; "What Goes Around Comes Around" features a Curtis Mayfield-like falsetto vocal buoyed by Stax-inspired sax fills; "It Ain't Over 'til It's Over" bathes the album's catchiest refrain in luscious strings, bringing to mind the Philadelphia soul of the Spinners and the O'Jays.

The seventh track, "The Difference Is Why," finds Kravitz once again deep in Hendrix territory, using guitar effects and thick, resonant bass lines that pop up again on "Stop Draggin' Around," "When the Morning Turns to Night" and a psychedelic reprise of "Fields." Hendrix's presence is also apparent in the lyrics on this record, imagist reflections on love and nature that, while less pedantic than Let Love Rule's tales of racial prejudice and urban despair, ultimately convey the same message – that, as Kravitz sings in "Always on the Run," "love's all that matters."

Celebrating one's heroes is hardly cause for reproach in itself. Prince – a musician whose penchant for producing and playing various instruments Kravitz shares and a singer whose whisper-to-a-scream vocal style he adopts for urgent numbers like "Stand by My Woman" and "All I Ever Wanted" – has rarely been subtle about his various fascinations, among which Hendrix happens to be prominent. But Kravitz is light-years away from His Royal Badness in terms of establishing a musical persona of his own. Rather than synthesizing his influences in a way that allows him some personal expression, Kravitz seemingly aims to acknowledge as many of them as he can in the course of an hour; the result is a rather disjointed album that lacks freshness and distinction. Kravitz continues to demonstrate a talent for crafting and arranging engaging songs; unfortunately, up to this point it has proven less a creative talent than a recreative one.