rita ora isn’t answering her doorbell.
I’ve been standing outside her house in
Beverly Hills pressing the buzzer. But
so far, nothing.
The house is situated at the top of a
steep driveway and guarded by an electric
gate like the rest of the vast homes on
this street belonging to the mega-rich,
so I can’t even bang on the door or peek
through a window.
I try the buzzer again. No reply.
Suddenly, a Land Rover pulls up in the
drive next to me. It must be Rita.
Wrong. The window rolls down to
reveal a handsome guy in his twenties.
“Are you here to deliver something?”
He looks puzzled when I explain I’m
actually meant to be interviewing Rita.
And that nobody is answering.
He tries to FaceTime her. When he,
too, gets no response, he gets out of the
car, launches himself over the gate and
disappears up the path.
A few minutes later he reappears,
opens the gate, apologises and beckons
for me to follow him up the garden path
to a bungalow. Rita is standing in the
doorway with a big smile on her face. “I’m
so sorry,” she says. “I thought we were
meeting at 1.30pm.” She points at the guy
who let me in. “This is my friend Faisal.
We’re working on tracks together.”
She’s quite a vision. Her signature
blonde hair is pulled back into a ponytail,
and she’s wearing vintage sunglasses
with pink lenses, a black ribbon round
her neck and a skimpy Solid & Striped
grey swimsuit. I was admiring it on her
Instagram feed days earlier.
“Excuse this,” she says, pointing to her
hair. It’s apparently a mess from wearing
extensions while filming Fifty Shades.
“I’m having it done later.”
When I arrived, she seems tired—
understandable given her current
schedule. Things have been crazy for Rita
lately and in a very good way.
Not only has she just wrapped up on
the second and third instalments of Fifty
Shades, but Rita is in the studio making
her second album. This comes after
settling a lawsuit with Jay Z’s Roc Nation
record label in June and signing a new
deal with Atlantic Records. Add that to
the fact she’s about to release her sixth
line for Adidas Originals, and later this
year will replace Tyra Banks as the host of
one of the biggest US TV shows,
America’s Next Top Model, and you’ve got
one very busy lady. But that’s the way Rita
likes it.
We settle outside by the pool. Faisal or
“Fai” joins us. A rubber ring floats on the
pool’s surface.
This house belongs to a friend. She’s
here temporarily while she lays down
tracks and shoots an Adidas campaign.
Yesterday was Rita’s first day off in
months. “I didn’t move for most of the
day,” she says. “Then I felt like, ‘Shit,
I need to do something.’” She cackles
loudly. “So I went for a walk.”
I’ve witnessed how bonkers Rita’s
schedule is firsthand over the past two
days. On Friday she was shooting for
Adidas until 2 AM on LA’s back streets.
She then spent a day shooting our cover
at a Malibu beach house, barely breaking
for lunch. From there, Rita drove straight
to the LA Pride Music Festival to perform
with Charli XCX at midnight.
“I’m so excited,” she says. “This is a
great time for an interview because I’m
recording my new record as we speak.”
It’s easy to forget that Rita is only 25.
But she’s always been a grafter. She grew
up in west London. Her family moved to
the UK as refugees from war-torn Kosovo
when she was one. Her mum Vera is a
psychiatrist and her dad Besnik, a pub
landlord. She has an older sister Elena
who works for her and a younger brother,
Don.rita kneW early on she wanted to
be a singer, and enrolled at Sylvia Young
Theatre School in London. She was in
the same class as Little Mix’s Jesy Nelson.
“It was a musical-theatre school and I
didn’t have that kind of voice,” she says.
“In singing classes I’d let rip, turning a
musical-theatre song into an R&B record.
I was never the quiet one—I was always
the girl with the annoying laugh. I still
am. It’s very potent and very loud.”
To my right, “Fai” chuckles to himself.
“It’s great,” he deadpans.
She graduated at 16 and gave up
school to focus on her singing career. “I
started my A-levels and then quit,” she
says. “I just wanted to give this a shot, so I
worked my magic and begged my parents
for a year out, so I could continue doing
music. I started doing open mic nightsin my dad’s pub, and then I’d help my
dad behind the bar. It’s very hard to pour
a good pint, FYI. I can give you some
pint-pulling lessons!” That laugh again.
“But yeah, the crowds just got bigger and
bigger.”
From there she got a manager, Sarah
Stennett, who also looks after Zayn Malik,
and featured on Craig David’s 2007 track
Awkward. Then, in 2008, she auditioned
for BBC One’s Eurovision: Your Country
Needs You to represent the UK at 2009’s
Eurovision Song Contest. She later pulled
out.
“We were trying to get a record deal. I
auditioned in front of Andrew
Lloyd Webber and walked in really
wanting it, then walked out like, ‘What
am I doing?’ It didn’t feel right. I knew it
wasn’t how I wanted to do my music.”
Her intuition paid off: A few months
later, she was signed by Roc Nation. She
released Hot Right Now with DJ Fresh,
the first of three number ones in a row.
Her 2012 debut album, Ora, also topped
the charts. Since then, she’s had judging
roles on The Voice UK and The X Factor,
as well as acting parts in Fifty Shades and
Southpaw. She was even nominated for
an Oscar last year, and sang Grateful from
the film Beyond The Lights (up for Best
Original Song) at the ceremony.
“I didn’t go into music being like, ‘I’ll
do an album, then a film.’ I went with the
flow and once my career started moving,
I said to myself, ‘This is not stopping...’ If
you can juggle it all, why not?”rita credits her Work ethic to
her parents. “They put this mindset in
me. I’ve worked really hard since I can
remember. There are people I respect
strictly for their hustling business
purposes. Victoria Beckham, for one.
She’s an incredible inspiration and I love
her stuff. And she came from the Spice
Girls—major! People get confused withit ’s Easy to forgEt
that rita is only 25.
but shE’s always
bEEn a graftEr.
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