Songfacts®:

• In the final single from his fifth album, Lenny Kravitz connects the rise in technology with the demise of human relationships. He explained in a 2000 interview: "'Black Velveteen' is about technology and we're getting so pulled in by computers and technology and our kids have their face in the computers all day. We have our face in computers all day and the human relationship is being diminished by this so I figured, well ok, we're so into computers, and we're so into technology and now we're also beginning to play God and get into cloning and all kinds of things. So we don't like to have relationships we like to have them but we don't like to keep them and we don't know how to keep them. We give up quickly. Divorce is an easy option. So why not just create your own mate? And synthesize a human being. You get tired of it, you turn it off and put it in the closet, you know, like the vacuum cleaner. You pull it out when you want it. Oh you don't want this one, and then you want, you start, it's probably going to happen one day. We're going to get to a really sick point of designing fake people."
• In this electro-rock song, Black Velveteen is an android, a "21st-century dream" who can do everything from homemaking to lovemaking.