Rita Ora: “I Lived With Constant Anxiety”…After Being Signed By Jay-Z At 18!!!
Rita Ora (guest), Steven Bartlett (host)
In this episode of The Diary of a CEO, featuring Rita Ora and Steven Bartlett, Rita Ora: “I Lived With Constant Anxiety”…After Being Signed By Jay-Z At 18!!! explores rita Ora Reveals Hidden Anxiety Behind Fame, Family, And Reinvention Rita Ora traces her journey from Kosovo refugee to record-breaking UK pop star, revealing how early family struggle, immigration, and her mother’s cancer shaped her resilience and work obsession. She explains how chasing security and external validation drove her to overwork, rebel in her 20s, and experience severe anxiety and panic attacks at the height of her success. Through therapy, routines, and redefining success, she’s learned to separate her worth from career outcomes and focus on stability, relationships, and creative longevity. The conversation frames her new album as a rebirth: owning her masters, embracing marriage and stepmotherhood, and deliberately crafting a long-term, multidimensional career.
Rita Ora Reveals Hidden Anxiety Behind Fame, Family, And Reinvention
Rita Ora traces her journey from Kosovo refugee to record-breaking UK pop star, revealing how early family struggle, immigration, and her mother’s cancer shaped her resilience and work obsession. She explains how chasing security and external validation drove her to overwork, rebel in her 20s, and experience severe anxiety and panic attacks at the height of her success. Through therapy, routines, and redefining success, she’s learned to separate her worth from career outcomes and focus on stability, relationships, and creative longevity. The conversation frames her new album as a rebirth: owning her masters, embracing marriage and stepmotherhood, and deliberately crafting a long-term, multidimensional career.
Key Takeaways
Early adversity can build powerful resilience—but also a lifelong fear of losing everything.
Growing up as a Kosovo refugee in London, watching her parents restart careers and battle illness, left Rita with a deep drive to prove she deserved her place and to overwork. ...
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Showing up consistently—often for free—is what created her breakthrough.
Rita’s path from school choir to Roc Nation hinged less on a master plan and more on relentless presence: interning at studios for free, making tea, mopping floors, singing anonymous demos, and performing anywhere she could (her dad’s pub, Portobello Market, shoe shop playlists). ...
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Don’t outsource your identity to powerful people or their promises.
Signed by Jay‑Z’s team at 18, Rita eagerly did “whatever they said,” believing big names must always be right. ...
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Anxiety often appears when life looks ‘perfect’ from the outside.
Her worst panic attack happened at 25, backstage at a Prince’s Trust event, despite years of success and high-profile recognition. ...
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Masking confidence is not the same as feeling confident.
Rita calls herself an “autopilot confident” person: she can perform, walk carpets, and project certainty while internally looping thoughts like, “Is this good enough? ...
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Chasing validation through chaos leads to emptiness when the noise stops.
In her 20s, she numbed distress with partying, drinking, bad food, and seeking love in the wrong places. ...
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Longevity requires business thinking, sacrifice, and constant learning—not just talent.
Rita stresses team stability (many of her team since age 16), missing countless life events for work, and doing deep ‘homework’ on music history and genres. ...
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Notable Quotes
“I was a naive, young dreamer, and that's exactly what you should be at that age.”
— Rita Ora
“I'm always in fear of losing everything that I've got. I don't think that will ever go away.”
— Rita Ora
“Showing up. You have to be willing to get up and get out of bed and just be there.”
— Rita Ora
“Don't believe all the promises that people tell you.”
— Rita Ora
“When you feel broken, there's nothing that anyone could say that's gonna put you back together. The only way you can get out is if you start climbing.”
— Rita Ora
Questions Answered in This Episode
You describe waking up after nights out to a silence that ‘didn’t feel nice.’ If you could time-travel into one of those mornings, what would you say to your 24-year-old self in that exact moment?
Rita Ora traces her journey from Kosovo refugee to record-breaking UK pop star, revealing how early family struggle, immigration, and her mother’s cancer shaped her resilience and work obsession. ...
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When you talk about being signed by Jay‑Z at 18 and doing ‘whatever they said,’ can you point to one very specific creative decision from that era that you now wish you’d pushed back on—and how you’d handle it differently today?
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You’ve said your fear of losing everything is partly inherited from watching your parents start again as refugees. If you lost all your current success tomorrow but kept your knowledge and relationships, what concrete steps would you take in year one to rebuild?
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You mentioned that being a woman in music means you have to be ‘more consistent’ to get the same credit. Can you share a particular instance where you felt a male peer was celebrated for something you were criticized or ignored for doing?
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Your new album ‘You & I’ is about rebirth and a more stable version of you. What guardrails or non‑negotiable boundaries have you put in place this time—creatively, professionally, and personally—to make sure you don’t slip back into the patterns that led to panic and burnout in your 20s?
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Transcript Preview
I was on a rollercoaster ride. I was living my dream, but then when I would wake up, it'd be like (heart beating) silent, and it wouldn't feel nice. (heart beating)
Rita Ora. (instrumental music)
She's an international pop star.
Who's had the most solo female UK top 10 singles in history.
I'll never let go. Everything I've done is about to disappear. (tape rewinding)
Who is Rita Ora?
I came to the UK when I was one. We refuged from the war in Kosovo. There was a sense of having to overwork to prove myself. I was a naive, young dreamer, and that's exactly what you should be at that age. I'm ready for ya. I was backed up by Jay-Z.
Who would've thought Jay-Z would roll by with a brand new artist?
After my first album, everything shot to number one. You know, my life just changed overnight. I was looking for things in the wrong places, and I just went rebel. Eating really bad. I was drinking, and the media and all the fright, and I was having the craziest panic attacks.
It feels like a weight that you've been carrying for a long, long time.
Yeah, I mean, there's nothing that anyone could say when you feel broken that is gonna put you back together. Don't believe all the promises that people tell you.
What was the advice you needed but didn't get?
Oh, man.
In life, sometimes the external world will craft your narrative and your story and your identity for you. And often, we're told that saying less is more. Now Rita, for much of her life, has followed that philosophy, but today she's decided to say more. And what you learn from this conversation will be illuminating. It will be inspiring. It will make you understand Rita Ora, the person you've seen and heard about for a decade. But maybe even more importantly, through this conversation, the twists, the turns, and the untold stories of a young woman who was signed at 18 by Jay-Z, crazy, crazy story, you're gonna learn something about yourself. I know I did. (instrumental music) Rita.
Hello.
Take me back.
(gasps)
Where'd you come from?
I am from Pristina, Kosovo, in a country called Kosovo. Wow. It's tiny. It's gorgeous.
What brought you here?
I came to the UK when I was one, in 1991. I was born in 1990, and, um, we refuged from the war in Kosovo, and I've been living in London ever since.
Why did, why did your, um, parents choose to come here of all places?
I think it was just such an easy route as well. It was close enough to home but not close, you know? It was also a lot of family and cousins that my parents already knew moved to London, so it was kind of the safest bet for them, I think.
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