On ‘Masters of the Game’ Lenny Kravitz Explains What He Really Wants from Black Media: ‘I Want to Be at the Table’

Last yr Lenny Kravitz criticized the Black Awards and I actually cared about it. I totally agreed. At the end of 2023 he told Esquire.“To this day, I have not been invited to a BET or Source Awards party. Here was a black artist who reintroduced many black art forms, who broke barriers – just like the ones that came before me. This is positive. And they have nothing to say about it?”

His criticism was accurate. And it isn’t about selecting a particular sales channel – most black entertainment media have allowed some kind of segregation. Everyone says blackness is fluid and takes many forms, but then we rejoice certain forms of blackness and ignore others. In music, it is particularly clear that certain types of black are placed on a pedestal above others. We love our black MCs and our black soul singers, but can we love our black rock and roll stars? Don’t they deserve love too? Kravitz thinks so.

“I would like to be at the table,” Kravitz told me. The table he’s talking about is culture. He just wants to be part of the culture. He wants to be amongst other black music superstars and doesn’t want to be unnoticed because he is not into hip-hop or R&B. He wants to be at the table because he has been part of this culture his whole life. “I grew up with an abundance of Blackness, proud Blackness. I just want to be at the table with my brothers and sisters.”

Music

Kravitz’s rock and roll is a reminder that rock and roll was originally a black art form. Sometimes he meets black children on the street who ask why he creates white music, because they do not understand that rock was originally a black art form. It’s hard to play rock without referencing its black creators like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Bo Diddley and, of course, Sister Rosetta Tharpe.