Deep in the heart of Hollywood on a Friday night Rita Ora has convened a brain trust complex, all tasked with working on her second album, It's a presumably high stakes situation-she's enlisted a melange of big name producers from France, Britain, and Los Angeles to help her nail down the perfect balance of dance music and hip hop-but Ora is the kind of pop star who in general, remains cool amid chaos.

The Albanian-Briish 24-year-old is sweeping from room to weed-and-incense smelling room, cutting coals and offering input on the beats, and though it's the tail end of a long recording session, she is a blonde-bobbed, red-lipped firecracker, sparking ideas left and right. "Every person is so amazing in their own creative space," she says, still bubbly and effusive even in work-concentration mode. "You have to be careful with how you approach their creativeness. To collaborate, you have to push boundaries with each other to make something great come out-where you're like, 'Come on, dude, I know you've never done this before. Have a go!"

In the sprawling main room of Record Plant studios, where Ora and her crew have set up a base camp for recording her vocals, the fruits of her collaboration are being tested. Josh Gudwin, an engineer Ora met through Justin Bieber, is sitting in the captain's chair of the holodeck, splicing together a fresh recording of Ora's mellifluous singing on a juicy, frolicsome Diplo beat. It's a pitch-perfect interpretation of 2-step, the British dance genre, and Ora voice clicks into it like a jigsaw piece. I makes sense, considering her early days on the mic at drum'n'bass and U.K. garage raves in London, where an underage Ora snuck to hear pioneers like DJ Luck and MC Neat. In fact, her voice sound at home on any variation of club music. Cases in point: In one of the Record Plant's many rooms, U.K. club stars Disclosure and London Grammar are working on a new Ora track in another room is the Bay Area producer Nic Nac, whose "Loyal" rhythm was a smash for Chris Brown.

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Hand typed. This is from her March Nylon cover. This album should be pretty dope. Thank God Calvin Harris is gone!!!!

this sounds awesome
I am glad Calvin is gone, the artists she works with now, shape up to translate in a much better album

I never was team Calvin and I still stood by my stance that "I will Never Let You Down" would NOT launch her worldwide...and I was right. That song is beyond basic and I hope it does not find its way on her album.

yeah I Will Never Let You Down should not be included

I'm so excited for this album tbh

That's interesting

Omg she's coming for blood

Looks good can't wait

London Grammar is ****ing brilliant. My excitement for this project went up by a 200%

Yes at her snatching some big name producers recently!

She's ready to give that music career some much needed attention finally

Hopefully this album blows her WW.

I'm starting to stan.

Too bad we'll never get to hear any of it, knowing Rita

She'll prolly take a 3 second guest role in Adam Sandler's next movie and spend the next 8 months promoting that

London Grammar are amazing, get those indie hits FIRO

Now I am excited,it's so cool that Rita has access to all these super amazing producers.

Blame her label not her,Rita is just trying to keep her name out there,despite all the label politics and all.

Here we go!!!!

I was bout' to leave her, but with Oscar performance and this producers i will keep stannnig for hrr!!!


This album will be amazing

Predictable.