Hot Right Now

Album: Nextlevelism (2012)
Charted: 1
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Songfacts®:

  • British-based drum & bass producer DJ Fresh (real name Daniel Stein) teamed up with the Roc Nation signed singer-songwriter Rita Ora for this song, which was released on February 12, 2012. Born in Pristina, then in Yugoslavia (now Kosovo), Rita Ora moved with her parents to London the same year of her birth and joined a choir at the age of six. During her early teens she attended the Sylvia Young Theatre School, whose other notable alumni include the Appleton Sisters, Emma Bunton and Amy Winehouse. Ora has been cutting records since the age of 14 and her dramatic mezzo-soprano singing voice was brought to the attention of Craig David who featured her on two of his tracks, 2007's "Awkward" and 2008's "Where's Your Love." The following year she was signed by Jay-Z to his Roc Nation label in early 2010 she made a cameo appearance in the video for her boss's single, "Young Forever."
  • Stern told Crave On Music why he chose Ora to be the vocalist for this tune: "I wrote the track and was trying to find the right person to sing it. I was in a studio session with some guys that worked with Rita and she was coming in the next day and I was trying to find someone to sing it. It's in quite a high key, so I tried a couple of people on it already and it just wasn't working out. They were like, 'yeah, we've got this girl in Rita Ora, we're not really supposed to talk about her as she has this big deal with Roc Nation and they're waiting for the right single' and blah, blah, blah. I saw a YouTube clip of her and I just knew right away that she was the right person partly cos she's so animated, she has got so much charisma, she's hot and fresh, everything really that I wanted to be vocal on that song. She came in the next day and demoed it and it sounded amazing. It kind of wrapped up really quickly after that."
  • Stern explained the song's meaning to Crave On Music: "It's kind of a little bit tongue in cheek in a way. I mean, it's just quite light hearted, a fun song you know, but it's kind of a little bit about people jumping on bandwagons."
  • The song's music video features Ora in a Los Angeles park dancing along to the song.
  • This was arguably the UK's first full drum & bass chart-topping single - Fresh previously reached the summit with the first ever dubstep #1 - "Louder". Stern told Official Charts: "This is the first drum & bass #1, and for me particularly that's a massive, massive feeling of achievement, because for so many of us, people like Goldie, Grooverider, Andy C, we've all been pushing for so long to get the music taken seriously and to be seen as a platform that anything can be done on. I really want to thank everyone in drum & bass and all the drum & bass fans for supporting the music and sticking with it."

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