Lenny Kravitz
Strut

Lenny Kravitz, after getting up from the "Hunger Games" film set, must have been quite aroused by Jennifer Lawrence to write music like this.

For those who might have missed it, Lenny Kravitz is an artist who didn’t start off so badly,
some say he was helped in his music career being the son of an actress from "The Jeffersons" and a television producer,
and others claim that despite everything, he has paid his dues playing in venues,
one thing is certain: he has musical abilities, enough to often want to oversee everything, from the lyrics to the arrangements (and sometimes even production);
his wave of vintage, with that touch of soul, as a champion of black music, in a way isn’t displeasing, although it seems he might have lost his musical direction while posing for yet another semi-nude photo shoot, while fiddling randomly with electronic samples.

This album named Strut, as usual, features him on the cover, more photogenic than ever, and after going musically through electronic madness and midlife crises of "now that I have lots of money I’d actually like to stay out of the spotlight and not be a superstar" (see "Baptism"), he returns with the sexual charge of a twenty-year-old fueled by Viagra, so much so that he decides to open the CD with "Sex", which heavily recalls the sounds of an '80s George Michael with clap hands effects.
The album moves through these sounds, sometimes clashing with soul elements or stumbling here and there into some guitar riff, unfortunately, a bit too constrained, for an artist who could actually do something good with a guitar in his hands, if only he wanted to.
The chosen single "The Chamber" says a lot about the sounds of this album, unfortunately, tracks like "Dirty White Boots" and the title track "Strut" fail to fully convince, despite having some interesting ideas, although a bit sporadic;
at least on a musical level, the electronic influences are very moderate except for a few songs (see "The Chamber"),
and are handled in a slightly less annoying way than his work "Lenny",
if this meager consolation is enough for you and if you deeply appreciate funky and soul nuances, you might enjoy this album more than I do.
The album closes with a cover of the Miracles and Smokey Robinson, which blends quite uniformly with the album's atmosphere.

Overall, the Lenny Kravitz who gifted those raw sounds in the early CDs is almost gone now,
and if at least the album "It is Time For a Love Revolution" still managed to evoke Led Zeppelin and the Beatles,
this "Strut" settles into atmospheres a few decades more recent, losing that freshness which he managed to bring out in one way or another, this now established character, who can still base his lyrics on pure sexual drive at this age, successfully selling.

For my part, I hope never to find myself in a car with a black guy listening to this album: the first instinct would be to jump out of the car at speed.