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France has paid tribute to Grammy winner Lenny Kravitz with its highest award, the Legion of Honour.
Culture Minister Frederic Mitterrand hailed the 47-year-old singer-songwriter at a Paris ceremony, telling him "you freed yourself of the barriers between black and white sound".
Rocker Kravitz said he got his first big break at a 1989 music festival in the western French city of Rennes that transformed his career "overnight".
He said: "I know it sounds like a fairytale but it's true."
Kravitz was born to a black mother and white father, and his latest album, Black And White America, tackles interracial issues - notably what his parents experienced in 1960s New York.
