Regarding the Lenny Kravitz concert in Miami Beach

[Editor's note] A few weeks ago I went to see Lenny Kravitz at the Fillmore and I’m still schvitzing. He is, without a doubt, the handsomest man I’ve ever seen sing songs. To put it bluntly: he gave me hot flashes that made my eye-glasses fog up.

Now that I’ve gotten those shameful, embarrassing, and totally superficial feelings out of the way, let me expand on something more redeeming: namely, Lenny Kravitz’s awe-inspiring talent for music.

Lenny Kravitz is perhaps one of the most talented musicians of his generation. He has no equal in either his genre-blending style or his prowess on stage. He exudes raw, real bad-assness in a way that is incredibly lacking in music today. For about 2 hours, he slithered on that stage and turned in performances that shook the very rafters of the Fillmore. Admittedly, he stirred something else in me, but I digress.

Unfortunately, he is also one of the most under appreciated talents of his generation. Countless people I know were surprised that I was attending a Lenny Kravitz concert. Mostly because they were surprised to find that he’s still making music. The truth is that he’s making some of the best music of his career. His latest album, Black and White America, is a rousing opus of rock and funk perfection. It’s a work peppered with spiritual, socially conscious and politically aware themes.

All that certainly came across in the concert. However, I didn’t go there to be enlightened. I went to have fun and Lenny went above and beyond anything I was expecting! He sang the old stuff. He sang the new stuff. And he did some really amazing stuff I’ve never heard before but loved just the same. At different points throughout the show, he was both poignantly introspective and infectiously electrifying.

One such moment came in the form of his encore. He came out wearing an unbuttoned shirt, rippling abs from chin to navel, and proceeded to sing the hell out of “Let Love Rule”. At one point, he jumped into the crowd, went across the theatre, showed up in the balcony, and then finished it back on stage. All the while he had the crowd be his thunderous chorus.

We danced and sang-a-long, we got hot and sweaty, and we rocked out with a rock star who has earned the title in every sense of the word.

And yet, no one else does what Lenny Kravitz does.