The biggest takeaways from the 59-year-old rocker's new wide-ranging Esquire cover story
Lenny Kravitz opened up about his life and career in a new all-encompassing interview with Esquire.
Kravitz leaves little out, detailing his journey from the son of a famous TV star, to rock-n-roll icon and where he finds himself today, as he prepares for the release of his first album in five years, Blue Electric Light.
He dives into his personal life as well, dishing on his desire to marry again, his blended family with ex-wife Lisa Bonet and some of his past traumas, including a sexual encounter he had as a teen and feeling ignored by Black entertainment outlets over the course of his career.
Read on for the five biggest takeaways from Kravitz’s interview with Esquire.
1. He's ready to marry again and even welcome more children
The 59-year-old musician isn’t shying away from love. While the “Are You Gonna Go My Way” singer has not walked down the aisle again since divorcing ex-wife, Lisa Bonet, in 1993, he’s hopeful that marriage is still in his future.
“Absolutely. I’ve grown enough. I’ve become stronger. I’ve become more disciplined,” Kravtiz said when asked if he’d get married again. “I’ve become more open to be able to do so. But it’s been a very difficult thing for me to figure out.”
Kravitz, who has had failed engagements to Nicole Kidman and Adriana Lima, added of marriage, “The desire has always been there.”
“The tools in which to do so have not always been there,” he explained.
He wouldn’t be opposed to having another child, either. Kravitz, who is a proud dad to 34-year-old daughter, Zoë Kravitz, who he shares with Bonet, told the outlet, “I could not, and I could.”
He continued, “If it doesn’t happen, I’ve done the best with Zoë that I could ever dream to do. If I was with somebody that wanted to have kids, absolutely. A hundred percent.”
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2. Jason Momoa's kids call him "Uncle Lenny"
Kravitz has long been open about his blended and somewhat unconventional family with his ex and her now estranged husband, Jason Momoa.
The group are so close, that Kravitz often spends time with the Aquaman star and has grown close to he and Bonet’s two children, Lola, 16 and Nakoa-Wolf, 15.
They even call him “Uncle Lenny.”
While some find their family dynamic fascinating, Kravitz tells the outlet it’s “normal” for him.
“I wouldn’t think of it as this heroic feat,” Kravitz said. “This is just normal to me.”
Even when things were rocky between him and Bonet in the early years of their divorce, Kravitz knew they’d get to the place they are now.
“Its family. Even when it wasn’t working, I knew one day it would. It had to,” he maintained.
3. He feels ignored by Black media outlets
“To this day, I have not been invited to a BET thing or a Source Awards thing,” Kravitz told Esquire. “And it’s like, here is a Black artist who has reintroduced many Black art forms… who has broken down barriers — just like those that came before me broke down. That is positive. And they don’t have anything to say about it?”
Kravitz pointed out several examples, including when Vibe, a popular music magazine highlighting hip-hop, R&B, and Black culture, waited nearly a decade to feature him in their Who’s Who section, something they’d been doing since the magazine debuted in 1993.
The lack of recognition has proved baffling for the rock star, who has succeeded in blending genres just as much as he has blending his family.
Kravitz told the outlet that he finds it hard to understand why his success “is not celebrated by the folks who run those publications or organizations.”
He added, “I have been that dream and example of what a Black artist can do.”
Kravitz also addressed the recent racist and misogynistic comments from Rolling Stone founder and former editor-in-chief Jann Wenner, calling them, “disappointing and sad.”
The 77-year-old caught flack after he said that Black and female musicians “didn’t articulate at the level” of the white musicians when asked why he only featured white, male artists in his new book of interviews, The Masters.
Kravitz, a long time friend of Wenner, said he was embarrassed to hear that kind of statement from someone who at one point, was an integral part of his life.
“I’ve known Jann since 1987. I’ve been to his house. In his life. I was disappointed. I was very disappointed,” Kravitz said. “The statement alone, even if you just heard about the man yesterday, was appalling and embarrassing. And just wrong.”
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4. He doesn't consider himself a victim following an unwanted sexual encounter as a teen
Kravitz wrote about the incident in his 2020 memoir Let Love Rule, but the incident was only briefly described, and he didn’t try to characterize it as a sexual assault, instead describing it as unwanted sexual contact from a stranger.
It’s unclear exactly when the incident happened, but sometime in his teen years in the late 1970s or early ’80s, Kravitz’s parents went out of town and left him in the care of a male family friend, who was old enough to be an “uncle” to him.
During that time, the man invited some of his friends over. While Kravitz was sleeping, a woman allegedly snuck into his room and got into his bed before touching him in a sexual manner.
Though he didn’t say much about the moment, he made it clear that the way he had been violated would impact how he strived to treat the women that he was romantically interested in going forward.
“I wasn’t interested in convincing or coercing women [going forward],” he wrote at the time. “I’d been coerced myself and didn’t like it.”
When asked if he now thought of the touching as a sexual assault, Kravitz instead called it, “an experience and a lesson.”
“I’m not saying that there aren’t things that deserve to be addressed — maybe somebody would say it should have been addressed and that it was, whatever, but that’s the time it was. I live, and I learned,” he continued before declaring, “I wasn’t traumatized.”
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5. He believes his father cursed him with infidelity
When he was 19, Kravitz discovered that his father, Sy Kravitz, was having an affair. He begged his mother, Roxie Roker, to fly him to the Bahamas, where she was visiting her own father, so he could break the news in person. But when he did, Roker wasn’t surprised, and revealed that Sy had been cheating on her throughout their marriage.
As Sy packed up and prepared to leave, seemingly the last straw this time for the couple who had remained together throughout his string of infidelities, Roker asked him if he had anything to say to their son, who was there to witness his departure. “You’ll do it too,” he said to the future Grammy-winner.
The premonition proved to be true, with Kravitz telling the outlet that he struggled to be faithful in many of his romantic relationships.
“I felt it when he said it, but the shock waves lasted decades and got stronger and stronger and stronger,” he shared. “I won’t lie to you…,” Kravitz added when asked if he’s been unfaithful.
“Being confident that this is the person for me, always thinking something else may be better,” he continued.
He’s come to the other side of that now, but Kravitz admits that time in his life was “hardcore,” adding that those habits took years to unlearn.
He doesn’t regret those moments, instead calling them, “part of the journey,” though he does have remorse for what some off his previous partners endured, adding, “I put some people through some hard times.”
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