Lenny Kravitz: The Rock Star Behind “Are You Gonna Go My Way”, and the Rumour He Shut Down
So Lenny Kravitz is trending in Nigeria today and I know some people panicked when they saw his name. Let me say it first. He is fine. There were rumours online on Sunday that he was on the private jet that crashed in Florida, and his team has said clearly that the reports are untrue and incorrect. So no, he was not on that plane.
But since his name is everywhere, I thought this is a good time to talk about the man himself, because a lot of younger people only know him as Zoë Kravitz’s dad or as Cinna from The Hunger Games, and he is much more than that.
Quick facts
- Full name: Leonard Albert Kravitz
- Born: 26 May 1964, in New York City
- Age: 62
- Job: Singer, songwriter, musician, producer and actor
- Known for: Let Love Rule, It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over, Are You Gonna Go My Way, Fly Away, American Woman, Again
- Big award: Grammy for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance four years in a row, 1999 to 2002
- Album sales: over 40 million worldwide
Where he comes from
He was born in New York, the only child of Sy Kravitz, an NBC news producer, and Roxie Roker, an actress who later became famous on The Jeffersons. His mother’s family had Bahamian roots, which is part of why the Bahamas is so special to him.
Music was there from the start. He was banging pots and pans like drums at three and he said he knew he wanted to be a musician at five. His father was a jazz promoter and knew people like Duke Ellington, and Ellington actually played Happy Birthday for him on his fifth birthday. Imagine that.
The family moved to Los Angeles when he was 10 because his mother got her role on The Jeffersons, and he sang in the California Boys Choir there.
The breakthrough
In the mid 1980s record labels kept telling him his music was not “black enough” or “white enough”. That kind of thing. So he went and recorded on his own, for a while under the name Romeo Blue, working with engineer Henry Hirsch, who became a long time partner. They both loved real instruments and old recording equipment, and you can hear that in his sound to this day.
His first album Let Love Rule came out in 1989 on Virgin and it mixed rock, funk, soul, reggae and R&B. Then came Mama Said in 1991 with It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over, which went top ten in America, and Are You Gonna Go My Way in 1993, and honestly that guitar riff is one of the most famous riffs of the 90s.
Then his cover of American Woman and Fly Away, and Again in 2000. That is when he won the Best Male Rock Vocal Performance Grammy four years straight, 1999 to 2002, which was a record in that category.
Acting and other things
People forget he acts too. He was in Precious in 2009 and he played Cinna, Katniss’s stylist, in the first two Hunger Games films. In 2026 he even voiced a villain called Bawma in the James Bond video game 007 First Light.
He also has a design company, Kravitz Design, which he started in 2003 in New York. They have done hotels, furniture with CB2, wallpaper, all kinds of things. And he has done camera collaborations with Leica because he takes photography seriously.
Later career
He played the Super Bowl halftime show with Katy Perry in 2015. His album Raise Vibration came out in 2018. In 2023 he wrote Road to Freedom for the film Rustin, and it got a Golden Globe nomination and made the Oscar shortlist. In 2024 he got his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame and released his 12th album, Blue Electric Light, with a world tour after it.
His style and his sound
What makes Lenny different is that he plays most of the instruments on his records himself. Guitar, bass, drums, keyboards. A lot of his albums are basically him in the studio with a small team, and that old school, live instrument sound is very much on purpose.
And the look. The leather trousers, the sunglasses, the scarves, the big rings. Even at 62 he still dresses like a rock star, and people online love talking about it. He has said before that keeping fit and eating well is a big part of his life, and he follows a mostly plant based diet.
He also spends a lot of time in the Bahamas, on the island of Eleuthera, where his mother’s family roots are. He has talked many times about how peaceful he finds it there, which is part of why the Bahamas flight rumour sounded believable to people.
Career timeline
- 1964: Born in New York City
- 1974: Family moves to Los Angeles
- 1989: Debut album Let Love Rule
- 1991: It Ain’t Over ’til It’s Over hits the US top ten
- 1993: Are You Gonna Go My Way
- 1999 to 2002: Four Grammys in a row for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance
- 2003: Starts Kravitz Design
- 2009: Acts in Precious
- 2012 and 2013: Cinna in The Hunger Games films
- 2015: Super Bowl halftime show with Katy Perry
- 2024: Hollywood Walk of Fame star and Blue Electric Light album
- 2026: Voice role in 007 First Light
About the rumour
What happened is that a pilot had once posted online that she would be flying him from Austin to the Bahamas, and after the crash on Sunday some people online wrongly said she was the pilot of the crashed plane, and then they decided he must have been on board. She has since said she was not the pilot, and his publicist told reporters the reports were untrue. So it was just wrong information spreading very fast.
It is a sad story for the families of the people who were actually on that plane, and I do not want to say more about it than that. But for those asking about Lenny, he is okay, and he is still doing his music.
