Lenny Kravitz says he “wasn’t traumatized” by a sexual coercion experience he had as a teenager.
Ahead of the March release of Blue Electric Light, his first new album in more than five years, Kravitz spoke with Madison Vain for Esquire. During their discussions, an incident the artist previously detailed in his 2020 book Let Love Rule is mentioned.
As Kravitz wrote in his memoir, he was a teenager when his parents asked a family friend to watch him while they were away. At one point, the family friend had a group of people over to the residence; later that same night, one of those individuals, a woman, came into his room and started to touch him.
“It was an experience and a lesson,” Kravitz said when asked whether he would consider what happened to him sexual assault. “Everything doesn’t have to be so...I’m not saying that there aren’t things that deserve to be addressed—maybe somebody would say it should have been addressed and that it was, whatever, but that’s the time it was. I lived, and I learned. I wasn’t traumatized.”
In Let Love Rule, released through Henry Holt and Co in October 2020, Kravitz wrote, “I wasn’t interested in convincing or coercing women. I’d been coerced myself and didn’t like it.”
Blue Electric Light, out in March of next year, marks Kravitz’s first-ever double album. In October, he released the video for his latest single “TK421,” directed by Tanu Muino. See it below.
