The early 90s threw out some rock and pop icons that resonated to different levels and to different depths of credibility. Guns N Roses were in full demise, Nirvana hit their peak and were just a few months away from losing their front man, Oasis were still an alternative club band on the up, in the background of all this was one Lenny Kravitz. He never really fitted the scene if truth be told, at a time when bands were breaking away from the obvious corporate machine and dressing down to be at a polar opposite from the Guns N Roses "show biz" pantomime business model, Lenny was still too based in this camp but with the pretension of an independent artist.
His music was OK but it and he were too derivative of older more successful acts for him to have any true credibility, he would have had credibility in his target audience were he living in a world where they had no access to Hendrix, Zeppelin, and Bowie and nearly any other 70s super act. But his target audience DID have full access to it and Kravitz's own credibility was never to be left unrocked by this reality, I mean why buy his music when you could pick up the real thing for half the price.
So times moved on and audiences moved on and Lenny was mostly forgotten in the main stream. So what become of him? Well if you watch the Hunger Games films he keeps turning up in these flicks, but its uncharitable to think that he had a bit of notoriety in the 90s and disappeared totally, the fact is he has sold records constantly and globally for the last 20 years its just that very few people seem to know this, and even fewer can remember any of his tunes released in that time. And yet there is no getting past the fact he has some musical talent; he's supported U2 on their last world tour, he produced Madonna's single "justify my love"; his greatest hits album was one of the biggest selling albums between 2000-2010. It seems that the media and general public just have little time for acts that so consistently and blatantly piggy backed off of bigger more talented stars, and that's something he in unlikely to shake off.