How Lenny Kravitz Made His Own Episode of ‘Curb Your Enthusiasm’ Guest Starring Krazee-Eyez Killa
In the third season of Curb Your Enthusiasm, Larry David met one of the show’s most memorable guest stars. At a party celebrating the engagement of Wanda Sykes, he was introduced to her fiancé: a rapper named Krazee-Eyez Killa. While talking to Larry, Krazee-Eyez ran some lyrics by him from a song he was working on called “I’m Coming to Get You.” Krazee-Eyez also, as one does at their engagement party, discussed his love of cunnilingus.
Sykes and Krazee-Eyez broke up later in the episode thanks to his flagrant infidelity and that was more or less the last we saw of him (but for a brief cameo during Season Nine in 2017). However, in between his two appearances on Curb, Krazee-Eyez Killa had another adventure with an incredibly famous rock star.
In 2010, Chris Williams, the actor behind Krazee-Eyez, was at a party when Lenny Kravitz recognized Williams for his role on Curb. Soon after, Kravitz asked Williams, who also had a recurring role on Silicon Valley and served as a series regular on the Joel McHale series The Great Indoors, to come to his house in the Bahamas to create what was essentially a homemade, unofficial episode of Curb starring Kravitz and Krazee-Eyez Killa in which Krazee-Eyez guest rapped on Kravitz’ new album.
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The project was called “Booty Pop,” named for the song Krazee-Eyez was supposedly going to be appearing in. It ended up never seeing the light of day, but it was obviously still an unforgettable experience for Williams.
Krazee-Eyez Killa Meets Lenny Kravitz
On March 4, 2010, I was at an Oscar party for the movie Precious, and Lenny Kravitz was there. Mathieu Bitton, who is a famous photographer, was Lenny’s private photographer back then, and I’d met Mathieu years before. During the party, Mathieu came up to me and said, “Lenny wants to meet you, he’s a big fan of Krazee-Eyez.” I was like, “Oh! Yeah! Of course!” I mean, it was Lenny Kravitz.
So we started talking, and on camera, we started doing this little riff thing with me in character as Krazee-Eyez. I was saying to the camera, pointing to Lenny, “He’s a Jew. I like Jews. Most of my peoples are Jews. How come you’re a Black Jew?” He explained that “Jews are Black,” and I got into this thing about “Jesus was a brother.” It was like 40 seconds long, and it was a lot of fun.
A week later, Mathieu called me up and said, “Lenny loves that character, and he would love for you to come down to his house in the Bahamas to do a video with him.” It was basically going to be like a special feature, like this own mini-episode of Curb where Krazee-Eyez comes to Lenny’s place in the Bahamas to rap on his album. It was going to be for Funny or Die or something like that.
Krazee-Eyez Goes Caribbean
It all happened pretty fast. On April 15th, they flew me down to the Bahamas. I got dressed as Krazee-Eyez on the plane so they could shoot me as Krazee-Eyez coming off the plane. It was all being shot guerrilla-style by Mathieu.
I stayed in character for the drive. We were filming, and we ended up stopping on a bridge. That’s when we found out Krazee-Eyez was afraid of water. From there, we went to Lenny’s beach. He lived in this Airstream right by the beach, so we had this little scene on the beach where Krazee-Eyez was like, “Where the bitches?” The premise of the scene was basically “Where’s all the fancy shit? Because I know you Lenny Kravs, and you got a lot of bitches around.”
After that he brought me to the house. I dropped the character, and the three of us came up with a rough outline of what we wanted to do to make our own Curb episode. We came up with this story where Krazee-Eyez was coming down to rap on Lenny’s album, but his necklace goes missing and we’re trying to figure out who stole the necklace — turns out it was just misplaced.
After Krazee-Eyez finds the necklace, we go into the studio to rap on the album. It’s for this song “Booty Pop,” which is a real song, but it got renamed “Boongie Drop” on his actual album. In the studio, Lenny was trying to get Krazee-Eyez to rap clean, because it was this song about this cultural dance, but Krazee-Eyez wouldn’t listen and kept rapping these really dirty lyrics. One line I wrote was, “Slip off those wet panties and undo your bra, so I can get this black velvet in your cundelá. I’m a stole-cold killa with one Krazee-Eye. Gonna watch that booty pop ‘til it make me cry.”
Finally, Lenny fires Krazee-Eyez, and Krazee-Eyez heads back to this shack hotel that feels like it’s in the middle of the jungle. From there, Krazee-Eyez gets scared by this cat, and he ends up rubbing a mezuzah that falls into his hands. Because of this, Krazee-Eyez converts to Judaism. Then Krazee-Eyez and Lenny have this whole seder dinner, and I tell Lenny that I’m going to do Fiddler on the Roof of My Car like, “Matchmaker, matchmaker find me a bitch!” Then Krazee-Eyez heads back to the airport, the end.
I was down there for three or four days, and when we weren’t filming this thing, we were just hanging out at Lenny’s house. Lenny’s a regular island guy; there’s nothing fancy there. He has a garden so we did some gardening. We went to a club one night, and he’s a regular down there so people don’t treat him like he’s a rock star. You almost forget he’s a superstar because he’s so normal and cool. He’s not intimidating at all — he’s just Lenny.
Cue the ‘Curb’ Theme
After I got back, two or three weeks later, they let me know they weren’t going to use the footage. Lenny’s people at the time — I think he had new management or something — didn’t think it was appropriate, and they didn’t want him to do it. Mathieu had already started cutting a scene of me and Lenny in the studio, so he cut one scene for me and gave it to me, but that was it. It was never released. I did end up in the background of a scene in the making-of documentary for that Lenny Kravitz album, but that was it.
Seven years later, in 2017, I got a call from Curb saying, “We want Krazee-Eyez back. He’s going to come in for a cameo.” I came prepared. I got this bejeweled yarmulke. I tried to bring that into the character — that he was Jewish now — but Larry didn’t go for it. He was like, “No, it’s too much,” because it was just that one little segment I was in.
But I was ready — I was as ready as Krazee-Eyez.
