Lenny Kravitz: Greatest Hits

iTunes Review

Lenny Kravitz mastered classic rock without ever completely going retro. He drew obvious inspiration from the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix but never let it limit his own creative boundaries. As a result he turned a muscular guitar riff such as the one holding down “Are You Gonna Go My Way” into a modern day psychedelic shimmer, an immediate point of entry for the 1990s crowd to understand and assimilate his 1960s message of peace, love and freakout. This 2000 collection sums up the first decade of his career, deliberately throwing the tunes out of chronological order in order to tell a new story. While there’s an undeniable catchiness to “Fly Away” and the gorgeously seductive “Let Love Rule,” the song that first announced his artistic viability, the social commentary of the low-key coolness within “Mr. Cabdriver” and the classic rock crunch of “Believe” make for a full-screen portrait of an artist who deliberately cast himself as a man out of time.