Chris Lake and Aluna’s collaboration began with one studio session in Los Angeles and produced two different 2023 records: “Beggin’” and “More Baby.” “Beggin’” came from their first day working together, built around a low-end foundation Lake pulled from an older project and a vocal idea from Aluna that he spent weeks refining. “More Baby” came from a freestyle Aluna recorded after that same session, then grew into a second track months later.
The partnership is useful because it shows collaboration doing what Lake has repeatedly said he wants it to do: change the result. Aluna did not simply sing a finished Chris Lake instrumental. She brought lyrics, melody, attitude and improvised material that gave Lake something specific to build around.
THE FIRST SESSION STARTED WITH A CALENDAR MISTAKE
Lake knew Aluna’s earlier work in AlunaGeorge and was enthusiastic when someone on his team suggested a session. The problem was that he entered the date incorrectly. In a 2023 MusicRadar interview, Lake recalled Aluna arriving at his door while he was not expecting her. After the confusion and apology, they started working.
That awkward beginning matters because Lake has described the first hours of an unfamiliar collaboration as something he tries not to waste on technical housekeeping. Rather than stop the session to design a kick and bass patch from zero, he opened an older Ableton project, dragged in a low-end combination he already liked and rewrote the bass for the new track.
That became the starting point for “Beggin’.” It also provides one of the clearest real-world examples in the site’s production workflow: Lake treats old sessions as modular resources when speed protects the chemistry of a new room.
ALUNA WROTE THE SONG; LAKE BUILT AROUND THE FEELING
In a separate 2023 V Magazine interview, Lake was careful about ownership of the song’s meaning. He said Aluna wrote the lyrics, so the words held more personal meaning for her. His focus was the feeling of the record.
Aluna described “Beggin’” as a cautionary situation: wanting someone intensely, then regretting what happens once the relationship becomes real. That framing gives the song more tension than a simple desire hook.
Lake’s production obsession centered on the vocal “oohs.” He told V he spent weeks trying to get that section exactly right and effectively built the song around it. DJ Mag’s profile from the same period captured the other side of that perfectionism: Lake said he had accumulated roughly 100 renders while continuing to refine the record’s low end and finishing details.
BEGGIN’ ARRIVED IN APRIL 2023
Apple Music dates “Beggin’” to April 20, 2023. The single is credited to Chris Lake and Aluna and was released through Black Book Records/Astralwerks. DJ Mag’s contemporary release coverage described it as produced by Lake with vocals from Aluna.
The record also appeared on Aluna’s 2023 album MYCELiUM, placing the collaboration inside both artists’ catalogs rather than treating it solely as a Chris Lake release. That matters for attribution: the track connects Lake’s Black Book world to Aluna’s larger project and should not be written as though she were only a guest voice.
Lake later said he regretted not playing “Beggin’” during the huge Under Construction Coachella 2023 set with FISHER. The record was finished too close to that performance to become part of the show, but the collaboration had already produced more material.
MORE BABY STARTED AS A FREESTYLE AFTER BEGGIN’
Lake’s clearest account of the second song came at Imagine Festival in September 2023. He told Dancing Astronaut that after the “Beggin’” session he asked Aluna to freestyle over another beat. She recorded about four minutes of improvised vocals. Inside that recording was the phrase “Give me more… More, baby.”
That fragment became the seed for the second collaboration. Instead of trying to repeat “Beggin’,” the pair followed a different piece of Aluna’s performance into a track with more abrupt sound effects, harder rhythmic punctuation and a club-focused arrangement.
DJ Mag reports that “More Baby” was produced by Lake and Aluna together, with Marco and Giampaolo Parisi also involved as songwriters. The official single was released September 15, 2023 through Black Book Records/Astralwerks.
LAKE TEASED MORE BABY BEFORE RELEASE
“More Baby” entered the live world before its official September date. DJ Mag reported that Lake first teased the track during his B2B with FISHER at Coachella in April 2023. That placed the record in front of one of the biggest crowds of his career months before the final single campaign.
The choice fits Lake’s broader practice of testing unreleased music in DJ sets. A club or festival reaction can tell him whether the rhythm and low end translate, while the record continues evolving in the studio. The process does not mean the crowd decides the finished arrangement; it means a dance record can accumulate evidence before release.
MORE BABY SHOWS A DIFFERENT SIDE OF THE SAME PARTNERSHIP
MusicTech used “More Baby” as a production case study because the track exposes several Lake signatures: open space between drums, short machine bleeps, pauses, disruptive sound effects and a heavily worked kick/bass relationship. Lake told the publication he wants some sounds to feel jarring without becoming too jarring.
Aluna’s vocal keeps those production tricks from becoming a sound-design demonstration. The “more baby” phrase is blunt, memorable and rhythmically useful, while the rest of the performance gives Lake material he can cut, repeat and place inside the groove.
That balance is what differentiates the second record from the first. “Beggin’” is more openly song-driven and built around emotional tension in Aluna’s lyric. “More Baby” uses the voice more like a physical component of the arrangement without reducing it to an anonymous sample.
WHY THE COLLABORATION WORKED TWICE
The two tracks share collaborators and release infrastructure, but they do not feel like versions of the same single. The reason is visible in the session history. The first song came from a formal meeting that Lake nearly missed and a lyric Aluna wrote. The second came from improvisation after the formal work was effectively done.
Lake has said that working with people he would not necessarily be expected to work with is part of what keeps him interested. Aluna, for her part, had already built a career across electronic music, R&B, pop and club culture. Neither needed the other to validate an existing lane.
The result is exactly what the Chris Lake songs career map identifies as a shift in his modern catalog: after years of perfecting stripped-back club tools, collaboration began opening more space for vocals and songwriting again, setting up the broader approach that would later define Chemistry.