He would find his break by producing Chipmunk's 2009 top-ten single "Diamond Rings", featuring a then unknown Emeli Sandé.
Naughty Boy describes it as an "audio-visual experience" and a concept album based on a luxury hotel where musicians come to perform.
Hotel Cabana reunites Naughty Boy with Sandé on eight collaborations, as well as features from other British artists such George the Poet, Sam Smith, Bastille, Tinie Tempah, Ella Eyre, Gabrielle, Wretch 32, Mic Righteous, Maiday, Chasing Grace, Ed Sheeran, and American rapper Wiz Khalifa, who appears on the album's fourth single overall, "Think About It", with Eyre.
Ava Stokes, Tanika, Thabo and Romans make additional appearances on the US version of the album which was released by Virgin Records on 6 May 2014.
Hotel Cabana is a pop, R&B, soul and hip hop music record, containing "orchestral flourishes" and "Bollywood inflections".
[5] The album centres predominately around the themes of fame, "involving debates about the tenuous nature of virtue and fidelity.
"[1] While making the album, Naughty Boy was influenced by M.I.A., Tracy Chapman, Joe Goddard, Woodkid and Major Lazer.
"Hotel Cabana where the sleepless kids live" was created following several days Naughty Boy and Sandé spent in the studio together.
[10] The Independent's Andy Gill also described the production on "Lifted" as a "[Naughty Boy] trademark Funky Drummer variant" with "quirkily looped strings and backing vocals".
[11] When conceiving the song "Hollywood", Naughty Boy originally considered asking Dame Shirley Bassey to sing the vocals, describing the situation as "epic", but in the end he thought it "would be too much".
[24] Additionally, on 14 August 2013, "Think About It" featuring Wiz Khalifa and Ella Eyre, received its first play on BBC Radio 1Xtra's MistaJam radio show,[25] while "No One's Here to Sleep" featuring Bastille was released for free as a promotional single as part of iTunes "Single of the Week" in the UK, for the week beginning 26 August 2013.
[27] Sandé has also performed "Pluto" (without Wretch 32 or Naughty Boy) during her Our Version of Events Tour, the song is included on the DVD of her Live at the Royal Albert Hall concert album.
[28] "No One's Here to Sleep" single was performed in TV series How to Get Away with Murder (season 1) episode 4 "Let's Get to Scooping" starting from 38:06 running time.
[29] On 12 August 2012, Music Week magazine confirmed that Naughty Boy's debut single would be titled "Wonder", and would feature frequent collaborator Emeli Sandé.
In his review, Copsey praised the opening section of the album, but noted that some of the urban-pop was generic and "the concept starts to lose its footing around the halfway mark".
[8] John Aizlewood from the London Evening Standard was confused about what Hotel Cabana was conceptualising but called Naughty Boy's collaborations with Sandé "stellar", praising "Pluto" (also featuring Wretch 32) and "Wonder".
"[49] The Times rated it 3 out of 5 stars, saying it "proves far more interesting than you might imagine" but was critical of the album's reliance on Sandé and described Ed Sheeran as "her twin in tedium, bleating away".
During her review, Empire said "Hotel Cabana sounds as you would expect: homegrown, high-end urban pop that over-conceptualises the dangers of fame."
At the half-way mark, it was just 3,600 copies behind the mid-week leader Hail to the King by US rock band Avenged Sevenfold.