Rita Ora: Badass, Beautiful, Brave

Pitch-perfect vocals, sassy signature style and the hottest job in TV: all-round badass Rita Ora is storming ahead, professionally. But what of life outside the limelight? Here, she talks the women who inspire her, meeting Prince, and the dangers of mixing business with pleasure...

- Karl Taro Greenfeld

Rita Ora has a plan. The fashion (Roberto Cavalli) and beauty (Rimmel London) endorsements, clothing line with Adidas Originals, campaign with Coca-Cola, performing a song (Grateful) at the Oscars, and appearing as a judge on this year’s X Factor, are all testimony that the plan is working. ‘Oh, it is in full effect. We’re these conniving Kosovan hungry bitches,’ Ora (born Sahatçiu) says of herself and her older sister, Elena Sahatçiu, who is also her manager. ‘I knew I was going to do things my way.’

The London-based 24-year-old insists the plan is a secret, but that it has been nearly ten years in the making. There was admission to the Sylvia Young Theatre School in Marylebone by improvising an ‘uncomfortably sexual’ dance to Britney Spears’