Let Love Rule - Lenny Kravitz Page 0,39

the social-political genre Afro Beat that had lit up the world. Like Bob Marley, Kuti channeled a universal vibration. He personified African genius. African music was deeply embedded in my soul. Africa spoke to me. Africa was me.

I loved Nigeria. I loved the ancient faces of the men, women, and children; the way they walked and ran, talked and laughed; their stark white shirts and dresses; their brilliantly patterned dashikis; their head wraps; their street food—especially suya, super-spicy meat on a stick. Dozens of times during the day, I felt so dazed that I had to stop and simply tell myself, These are my roots. Like in the Bahamas, I felt extremely connected. I belonged.

On the work side, I got to help out the bands that Ben Bruce had brought from back home, including One Way, featuring Al Hudson, which had dance smashes like “Pop What You Got.” These were the days of R&B funk groups like Lakeside and Con Funk Shun.

I liked bringing the musicians sodas and beer. When I couldn’t find an opener, a girl my age showed me how to pop open the bottle with my teeth. I couldn’t do that, but I could play the drums. During a tune or two, One Way’s drummer let me sit in. African audiences went crazy for the American soul. The gig was great.

I loved Lagos. Still, there were attitudes I didn’t understand. I saw so-called upper-class Black employers treat their Black servants sternly, even brutally. That threw me. As an American, I’d seen only whites treat Blacks like this. There was this one guy who had to sit at the front gate of a property in the glaring heat to manually operate the gate to let cars in and out. He would even sleep out there on the ground, to be ready whenever a car pulled up. When I asked the homeowner why he treated him like this, he arrogantly said, “He works for me. That’s his job.”

I’m sure he felt he had the right, but it really bothered me. Black-on-Black bias repelled me. So did the country’s heavy military presence. Crossing from one zone of the city to another, we were always stopped for a full-on search. The soldiers were menacing and short-tempered. Machine guns were shoved in my face. I’d never seen anything like it before. I was frightened, but it wasn’t just fear I felt. It was the oppression of a society ruled by brute force.

In spite of that oppression, I was deeply inspired by the motherland and her vibrant children.

On the trip home, Louis Smallwood wanted to stop over in Amsterdam. My first trip to Europe coincided with a mild, yet debilitating, case of malaria. At the Hotel Pulitzer, I was in bed for two days, shivering and sweating and going out of my head. Eventually, the fever broke, my hyper energy returned, and I spent twenty-four hours running around that storybook city, amazed by its old bridges and canals and especially the Bull Dog, a famous hash bar where I was handed a menu of the various strains of weed. A menu! Are you kidding me? A pothead tripping in a city where marijuana’s legal? I was stoned ecstatic.

BEVERLY HILLS

As a kid on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, I’d been around luxury and wealth, but Beverly Hills was on another level. I became friends with kids who lived in mansions the size of museums and who were dropped off at school in chauffeur-driven Bentleys. A lot of them drove their own Porsches and BMWs.

One of my first friends was Kennedy Gordy. He was a musician and an all-around good guy who loved to jam. He asked me over to his home in Bel Air. I drove up this winding road that led to a mountaintop overlooking the city. His house felt like a palace. His dad was Berry Gordy, founder of Motown.

On any given day at the Gordys, Diana Ross would be lounging by the pool. Smokey Robinson and Marvin Gaye would be playing cards in the den. The house was heaven! It had everything. One room was a video arcade with all the games I loved. I was used to taking the bus all the way to Westwood to spend my money on these exact same games. And now here they were—all for free! Also, you could order any kind of food at any hour from the Gordy kitchen, and someone would deliver it right to Kennedy’s room. Oh, and Kennedy’s room