Baptism by Lenny Kravitz (CD, May-2004, Virgin Records USA)

Let's face facts-Lenny Kravitz is probably the most critically maligned rock star of his generation. Throughout his entire 15 year career, Lenny's caught sh*t for being a hippie throwback or for being too derivative. Not like any other current artist out there is doing anything blindingly original. At any rate, I'll go on the record as having been a consistent Lenny fan since "Let Love Rule". And you don't survive for fifteen years without doing something right, right? Of course, at this point, Lenny's outgrown a bit of the wearing his influences on his sleeve, and with 8 albums under his...

Time and time again I hear people balk about how Lenny Kravitz is more into fashion than his own music. Need I bring up Steven Tyler, Prince, Andre 3000? Need we talk about the hairspray-laden 80 s? Fashion is just as important to the perception of cool, no matter how much any of us try to relegate it to the back burner. That s not to say Kravitz is inept the man can play a guitar (and bass and drums), he can arrange and produce a song, he can write and he did all of those things on this his 8th foray into music making Baptism . Minister Of Rock And Roll jump starts the party in a serious..

If you're Lenny Kravitz, and your last truly great album was Mama Said, and your last album (2002's Lenny) bombed commercially (and deservedly so I might add), what do you do? You keep on being Lenny and move on. To his credit, Kravitz has made the music he wants to make throughout his career, whether it was crafting perfect arena rock anthems like Are You Gonna Go My Way, over-rated retro-fitted numbers like the god-awful Fly Away, or the all around freak show that was the Circus album. It doesn't always work, and lately, it hasn't been working nearly enough, but Kravitz does what he wants...

Baptism has been long-awaited by Lenny fans, after the lackluster "Lenny", which came out in late 2001. Let's say it's not a masterpiece or a music milestone, but it's a damn great, fresh and enjoyable album, far better than the last one, "Lenny". The album opens with Minister of rock n roll, a song which combines different influences, resulting in a very powerful track, a real anthem, with a moog entwined with bass and drums to create a solid and sensual groove like those only Kravitz can create; the end of the song is something really special, with 2 vocal levels and a synthesizer played...