Mama Said by Lenny Kravitz

Mama Said, Lenny Kravitz's second album, arrived on Virgin in April 1991, and it's a time-machine record in the best sense, melting soul, rock and hard rock into one warm, grainy sound that could have been cut two decades earlier.

The big-name guest is Slash, on loan from Guns N' Roses, who helped write "Always on the Run" and tears through it alongside Kravitz, a riff so greasy it practically leaves fingerprints on the stereo. He shows up again on "Fields of Joy", and Sean Lennon has a co-writing credit on "All I Ever Wanted". Then there's "It Ain't Over Til It's Over", a sweet, falsetto-kissed soul ballad that proves Kravitz can do tender as well as he does swagger.

It did the business: sales good enough for double platinum, even though the RIAA's books still list it at platinum, and a peak of number 8 on the UK Albums Chart. In 2012 Virgin gave it an expanded double-disc reissue, loaded with remixes and bonus tracks.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.