“It was like finding pen pals,” Rita Ora tells Apple Music. “You had me in London, Imanbek in Kazakhstan, Gunna in Los Angeles, KHEA in Argentina, and David Guetta, well, who knows where David is at any one time. It’s a global project that went beyond language and geographical boundaries but somehow stayed lovely and intimate.” Bang—recorded across a pandemic-hit 2020—might also prove the most important project of Ora’s career. After exploring pop’s borders across her boatload of hits, here she sounds liberated. It began with some lockdown me time. “I was listening to albums I hadn’t heard in ages,” she says. “And I was reminded of those classic artist/producer relationships—Aaliyah and Timbaland, Justin Timberlake and Pharrell, Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson. You felt like those artists lived together and lived their music. I wanted that.”