Lenny Kravitz remembers hanging with Prince, going with him to “mess with” Michael Jackson

Courtesy Apple Music

Lenny Kravitz has been around long enough, and moved in and out of musical genres enough, to have met and worked with everyone from Mick Jagger to Madonna to Jay-Z. But in a new interview with Apple Music’s Zane Lowe, Kravitz says some of his most memorable moments were spent hanging out with two late legends: Prince and Michael Jackson.

“We spent so much time together. He used to call me late, late at night to meet him at a club to go play, just set up and go play,” he says of Prince. He adds the two would often go to Prince’s house “to watch funny movies or comedians,” adding, “He was really, really funny. He had an amazing sense of humor.” He was also, according to Kravitz, a sore loser.

“Prince is very competitive. He’s a very good ping-pong player. He’s very good at pool, basketball, everything,” Kravitz says. He recalls going over to Prince’s place in Paris one time with his then-girlfriend, Vanessa Paradis.

“Vanessa was really good at pool and she kicked his a**. And that was a hard one for him.”

Kravitz also remembers “going to visit Michael Jackson” with Prince, explaining, “He’d pick me up, we’d go see Michael in the studio and just mess with him.”

When Lowe notes the story was always that Prince and Michael Jackson were archrivals, Kravitz says, “I’m sure there was some kind of healthy competition, but it was more about having fun and sort of joking around with him. ‘Let’s go f*** with Michael.'”

When they did that, Kravitz says, “Michael was fascinated with my dreadlocks. He’s like, ‘What do you do?,’ y’know, touching my hair.”

But, he notes, “Both of them were really beautiful people.”

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