Mama Said
Lenny Kravitz
Virgin, 1991
Reviewed by
Troy Carpenter
Lenny Kravitz has always drawn strong comparisons to musicians of yesteryear.
But deep inside his second album Mama Said, it is hard to fault the man for
making music he loves with such passion and skill.
The record was the fruit of a tough period for Kravitz, following his much-publicized
divorce from actress Lisa Bonet, the mother of their two-year old daughter, Zoë. His
personal trials apparently pushed Kravitz deeper into his art, as evidenced by the tight
grooves, meditative ballads, and powerful rockers that populate Mama Said.
Most of Mama Said's lyrics deal with Kravitz's failed relationship, but he began
writing the songs before things turned completely sour, and consequently a lot of the
sentiment on the album is uplifting. The album's hit single "It Ain't Over 'Til It's
Over," is a beautifully realized soul tune, replete with horns and string
arrangements framing the lyric that illustrates Kravitz's final efforts at saving his
marriage. The preceding song is the melancholy piano ballad "Stand By My Woman",
whose lyrics are given a different bent when one realizes it was sung with the knowledge
that the woman is not going to stand by the singer.
A drummer then guitarist by trade, Kravitz plays most of the instruments on the album, but
his few collaborators do add a great deal to the songs they appear on. The first two songs
on the record feature Slash tearing into two essential, fier y guitar solos, but he isn't heard from again. Veteran journeyman Henry Hirsch
plays bass on many of the album's tracks and a young Sean Lennon even stops by to carry
the delicate progression of "All I Ever Wanted" on piano.
Mama Said climaxes with "What
The Fuck Are We Saying?", a sparse piano-and-drums-driven track, on which Kravitz's
voice reaches its most inspirational. The choral bursts of electric guitar give way to
Karl Denson's fitting saxophone solo, and then the modular fade-out seems to be what
Kravitz has been going for - a sound almost all his own.
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" Kravitz's
first album was a John Lennon love-in; Mama Said found the funk and exhumed all
the '70s soul we've been obsessed with this decade."
R. Wait
- NATN Contributor
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Related Links
Lenny Kravitz Homepage
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