It Ain't Over Till It's Over" is worth the price of admission alone. It's such an authentically executed homage to early '70s Soul, you'll be hard pressed to believe Kravitz wrote it himself. Beyond that, Mama Said is the strongest set of Kravitz' songs to date, with little filler and a close ear to getting that perfect sound. New artists often flaunt their influences, but few do so with the intensity that Lenny Kravitz displayed on his 1989 debut, Let Love Rule. Drawing on the legacies of artists ranging from John Lennon and Jimi Hendrix to Sly Stone, Kravitz offered a sound and a message that evoked the guitar-drenched, peace-loving psychedelia of the late Sixties so Read More unabashedly that it approached fixation. The good news, then, is that Kravitz has discovered the Seventies. On Mama Said, which alludes to a wider array of musical styles than its predecessor did, he offers a collection of new material that is, like much of his first effort, richly textured, movingly executed and maddeningly derivative. After "Fields of Joy," an opening cut that segues from a gentle acoustic intro into a searing burst of electric guitar, much of the first half of Mama Said plays like a sampling of black pop circa, say, 1972. "Always on the Run," written with Guns n' Roses guitarist Slash, is a bit of horn-tinged funk wrapped around a riff similar to that used by Stevie Wonder in "Superstition"; "What Goes Around Comes Around" features a Curtis Mayfield-like falsetto vocal buoyed by Stax-inspired sax fills; "It Ain't Over 'til It's Over" bathes the album's catchiest refrain in luscious strings, bringing to mind the Philadelphia soul of the Spinners and the O'Jays. The seventh track, "The Difference Is Why," finds Kravitz once again deep in Hendrix territory, using guitar effects and thick, resonant bass lines that pop up again on "Stop Draggin' Around," "When the Morning Turns to Night" and a psychedelic reprise of "Fields." Hendrix's presence is also apparent in the lyrics on this record, imagist reflections on love and nature that, while less pedantic than Let Love Rule's tales of racial prejudice and urban despair, ultimately convey the same message that, as Kravitz sings in "Always on the Run," "love's all that matters."