Let Love Rule - Lenny Kravitz Page 0,21
certified hit. The sitcom would run for eleven seasons and tape 253 episodes. Mom became a star. Her earnings grew far greater than my father’s. This changed the dynamic in their relationship. It took me a while to understand the impact of that change.
On the surface, it was easy to see. Mom was getting far more attention than Dad. At the time, Dad seemed okay with it. He was his wife’s biggest cheerleader. Her success made him proud and happy. But now that she was the bigger breadwinner, and not him, he had to adjust. For an alpha male like Dad, that wasn’t easy.
Before the start of the second season of The Jeffersons, Dad left New York. He arranged to work at NBC News in L.A., and the three of us moved into a two-bedroom apartment down the hall from Aunt Joan. We were back to our same dynamic. More than ever, he was on me. In L.A., Dad was out of his comfort zone. In the light of Mom’s stardom, he had to prove himself.
* * *
I graduated from Washington Elementary. Before starting John Adams Junior High in Santa Monica, I flew to New York to spend the summer in Bed-Stuy with Grandma Bessie and Grandpa Albert. It was so good to be back on the block. My grandparents always did wonders for my spirit.
So did Kevin Conner, a Brooklyn boy who’d been like a big brother to me since I was five. He was eager to show me what was going on. One day, right there on the corner of Throop and Kosciuszko, where the Rokers had lived for forty years, a kid our age had set up amps and giant homemade speakers in his front yard. I asked him, “Why are you playing records outside?”
Well, the kid let me know that he wasn’t playing records; he was making music.
I thought, How are you making music with records? That’s somebody else’s music. I didn’t get it. He was mixing vinyl on two turntables. Then these guys who called themselves “emcees” started talking over the music. They weren’t singing; they were telling stories over the recycled rhythms of songs I knew. This shit was funky. I loved it. Later, it would change my life and change the world.
With this music, a new style of movement was also born. The birth of break dancing was something to behold: I watched in amazement as guys in the neighborhood took sections of linoleum floors, laid them out on the sidewalk, and spun on their backs.
New York was being transformed visually, too. Subways were turned into canvases for underground artists. I liked the trains covered with graffiti more than the clean ones. The art spoke to me: fluorescent neon spray paint, whacky cartoon figures, flaming fireballs, ferocious snakes, and cuddly teddy bears devoured by slobbering green monsters.
I was witnessing the birth of hip-hop.
THE ZEN OF ZEP
Hip-hop was a cultural game changer. But my own personal game changer came in two different forms. These forms collided my first year of junior high in Santa Monica. I’m talking about rock ’n’ roll and marijuana. That combination propelled me in a whole different direction.
During lunch break, I jumped a fence and landed in an empty courtyard in a shuttered church. I was with Shannon Brock, who also happened to be half Black and half Jewish—only, in his case, his mom was Jewish and his dad was Black. Our other friend was a half-white, half-Hawaiian kid named Derek. He had a hippie dad who hung out with the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson. Derek and I loved riding our skateboards down Lincoln Boulevard to the Lucky supermarket, where he taught me to shoplift. Derek’s family barely had enough to get by. This wasn’t for fun. He was putting food on the table. He could slip a half-dozen steaks down his pants. I tried to help him, but I was a rank amateur. The best I could do was walk out with a box of cookies under my shirt. Mom, by the way, was crazy about Derek. She saw his sweet side. Mom saw everyone’s sweet side.
During our escape from school, in the deserted courtyard, Shannon broke out a joint, lit it, and passed it to Derek and me. I had tried weed a couple of times before, but never felt much. For Santa Monica teens in the mid-seventies, smoking weed was like breathing air. I took a puff and exhaled. Still no effect. Shannon told me to hold