"With the last note of his seventh album, Baptism, still humming off the padded studio walls, Lenny Kravitz unplugged his guitar, blew out the candles, and felt release swell in his chest, only to realize he was all by himself at 5 on a frigid February morning. There would be no party with Puffy, no champagne toasts, no beautiful women strung from his neck like stoles... Kravitz trekked back through a deserted Times Square to the Edison Hotel. Slinking into the elevator, he punched the button and rose to his floor. Alone. Or so he thought.

"'The reward has already been given.'

"The voice speaking was not his own. Kravitz looked around the elevator, a little stunned. It wasn't exactly a Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus moment, but for a jock star jonesing for gratification, the message was unmistakable: You're missing the point.

"'The voice was weird but really clear,' he says. 'And it was right. It reminded me that the process of making music -- getting to use this gift that God gave me -- that's the reward..."

[During a summer-camp training program when Kravitz was eleven, he caught the flu and ended up in the infirmary with another boy, a minister's son. After talking about God for several days, they felt a presence in the room. 'We almost couldn't breathe,' he recalled years later. 'I couldn't explain it, but it was the presence of God.']