James Brown was known as "The Hardest Working Man in Show Business." The moniker also fits Lenny Kravitz.
Kravitz releases a new album today and prepares for a 2014 tour in the wake of last week's appearance on "America's Got Talent" season finale and the rocker's roles in two box office smashes - the first two movies in the "Hunger Games" trilogy.
At age 50, Kravitz is still reaching his long-time fans, but thanks to the mega-success of the movies, he's reaching a whole new younger generation of fans. So, it's fitting that his 10th album, the upbeat, catchy "Strut," came about because of his roles in the second smash film.
Kravitz reveals that he created his new music while playing fashion whiz Cinna in "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire."
In the midst of shooting, "all of a sudden, all this music started coming into my head. I had to make a decision whether I was going to capture it or let it go," recalls Kravitz. "I was waking up at 5 a.m. for these ridiculous actors' hours. You're working all day. This stuff was just coming into my head. It kept coming. I basically stayed awake for two weeks. I slept maybe one or two hours a night sometimes. I got all the music down."
"This record brought me back to a place of what I love so much about music, back to the feelings I had when I was in high school," he explains, according to kpopstarz. "It's a real rock & roll record - it's raw, it's got soul and it came together really quickly. When you work hard and it's feeding you and it's creative, although it may be tiresome, it energizes you at the same time," notes Kravitz. "The last record, I was just sitting at the beach, down at the Bahamas, taking my time. This was in a rush."
In fact, Kravitz says the same applies to his whole outlook. The singer won four best male rock vocal performance Grammys in a row, from 1999 to 2002, after breaking out with 1989's "Let Love Rule" and churning out hits including 1993's "Are You Gonna Go My Way" and 1998's "Fly Away," Yahoo reported.
Although Kravitz has sold over 40 million albums, he says he's still hungry to make music.
"I'm always driven creatively. Now, all of a sudden, it's like bam. I'm hungrier than I've ever been. I have the desire to grow and to experience more and become better. I don't know if I have anything to prove. I just want to express myself. I wanna grow as a musician, to be a better performer. It's not about the charts or the money, it's about the experience."
