5

After the commercial, but not artistic, downdraft of his previous album, Circus, Lenny Kravitz came back in full force on 1998’s 5. The album yielded the hit singles “Fly Away” and “I Belong to You,” and it won two GRAMMY® Awards for Best Male Rock Vocal Performance on “Fly Away” and “American Woman.” (The latter song was appended to the album's 1999 edition, after Kravitz's cover of the Guess Who song became a successful single from the soundtrack to Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me.) In addition, “Without You”—originally a b-side to the album’s first single, “If You Can’t Say No”—was made track 15. The five-minute funk track “Supersoulfighter” finds the musicianship taking things a step forward, while “Black Velveteen,” another pro-active skirmish, was too complex a track to be a successful single but proved an album highlight. Loops and electronic toppings give the album a late-'90s sound that helped Kravitz prove he wasn’t just a retro rocker who had his Hendrix moves down cold.