Lenny Kravitz is branching out.

His latest album is a limited tour edition of his greatest hits CD/DVD, but after nearly 15 years of making music, the 41-year-old retro-rocker has added design and filmmaking to his resume.

Miami-based Kravitz Design, which he quietly started a few years ago, handles both interior design and architecture with more projects to come.

"Now, also, I'm working on a fashion house and home line," Kravitz told the Sun recently in an exclusive Canadian interview just hours before he would take the stage with Aerosmith for a sold-out show at the Air Canada Centre.

"Everyone's been doing it. You've got Puffy and J.Lo, and Gwen (Stefani) doing a great job at it, and I've just kind of been laying back. Now's the time for me to do it.

"It's interesting," he continues. "It's more of a life-style brand. It's something that's just another outlet for me. I'm not doing it to slap my name on things and sell them. Obviously, yes, it's about business, but for me, it's a completely creative outlet. It's what I do when I'm not making records. I'm always designing. I'm making furniture. I'm desiging wallpaper or different textiles. So I decided to start a company and do it because I just love it so much."

Among the completed architecture projects was a recording studio/penthouse for the South Beach luxury hotel The Setai, and Kravitz is currently considering "a big hotel project in Las Vegas."

As for his film work, he's co-written Barbecues And Bar Mitzvahs, a semi-autobiographical tale that he may also direct.

"It's a slice of life of an artist who's looking for love and wants to get married and achieve what his parents have, or what he thinks his parents have, and it's also about race," says Kravitz, the bi-racial product of a New York Jewish father and Bahamian mother (the late actress Roxie Roker of The Jeffersons). "It's about somebody who might have grown up in the same sort of circumstances that I did, racially."

The singer-songwriter is currently working on two albums to follow up his last studio release, 2004's Baptism.

One is a funk album that he's been working on for years, and the "other is pretty much a straight ahead rock" collection.

Kravitz, who is known for his collaborations, says so far James Brown's trombone player Fred Wesley and legendary New Orleans' pianist-producer Allen Toussaint have made appearances on the funk record.

When I offer up George Clinton as a suggestion, Kravitz responds: "That's funny. He was actually at my last show of the theatre tour in L.A. He was on the side of the stage the whole night, and then he came up for a second. We've talked about working together for years, but have never had the chance to get into the studio.

"Actually, no, he came to my house and we tried to record one night, but he got distracted," adds Kravitz with a laugh.

Kravitz's stop at the ACC marked the second time he has performed in Toronto this year. The first time was Massey Hall in April for what will go down as one of the best shows of 2005.

"The reason I had done the Massey Hall show and the whole theatre tour was to be able to get close to people again," says Kravitz. "The feeling that you get in the theatre like that, when everybody's close, is a very special feeing. I love playing big gigs as well. There's an energy, it's different. But the goal is to make that feel as intimate as a theatre."

Although he severely sprained his ankle on the second date of his fall/winter tour with Aerosmith, Kravitz did venture out into the audience at the ACC, just as he did at Massey. He had a cast on initially, but has since replaced it with a leg brace.

"I was running on stage down a ramp and my foot turned, and I ripped all the ligaments in my foot during the second to last song," he says of his injury. "I thought that I was going to see a bone sticking out when I took my shoe off, that's how bad it felt. But, you know, I didn't miss a show. I wore a cast for a week or so on tour, which is a real drag 'cause I couldn't move."

The complete recovery time for Kravitz, who has homes in Miami and in the Bahamas, is estimated between four to six months.

Ironically, Kravitz had no intention of being on the road this fall/winter but then Aerosmith came calling.

"They called me," he says. "Steven (Tyler) and I have been friends for years. They wanted to go out and do this tour and take out another group. It would be basically two headliners in one night. I was done touring. I just did a year and a half and had been home for just a couple of months and I thought, 'Well that's it for this leg. I'll go make another record and take some rest.' But then I thought this would be fun. And it is."

Despite the generation gap, Kravitz says he and Aerosmith have "the same spirit musically. I'm sure I can speak for the whole band, but especially Steven, he's a music fan. We get together and hang out. We listen to music. He pulls out his I-pod and shows me all the bootlegs he's got. And 'Have you heard this and have you heard that?' And we jam at the house (in Miami) and so it's great. It's great to see that person still having a passion for music in a very pure sense. I've seen a lot of people that are in his position who get to a point where it's 'Well, if they're not being paid or they're not on stage, they don't want to really play.' That high school boy that was inside of us all, who just wants to jam, is still there."