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“Meiga e Abusada” The 2013 song that first brought Brazilian singer Anitta to fame begins with a Lady Gaga sample and a dashing claim. “I get everything I want,” she says in Portuguese. “But it was very easy to control you.”
In the song’s music video, partially shot in Las Vegas, Anitta plays in the desert in a short plaid shirt, drinks champagne and drives to the casinos in a limo. It’s a statement that makes the timing of her bravery even more arrogant: Just a few months before her release, she had felt like nothing was going to happen to her.
“I am a pessimistic person” monument Speaking Portuguese, he said in a recent interview. This was partly because the odds were never definitely in his favor. “My father used to say when I was growing up, ‘We are poor, you can’t study art,’” she said. “He thought I’d need a plan B.”
He didn’t. Having released her first album at the age of 20, Anitta has become one of Brazil’s biggest pop stars. He has released four studio albums in the last decade, performed at the 2016 Olympic opening ceremony, and earned multiple Latin Grammy nominations. Anitta began singing in the slums of Rio de Janeiro, and success eventually followed her to the rest of South America; it featured a number of Spanish hits featuring stars like J Balvin and J Balvin. you know cemented its status as one of the region’s top-performing players.
The United States market seems to be the last frontier. This month Anitta will be performing on both weekends of the Coachella festival. On April 12 comes his new trilingual album “Versions of Me”, his first and first international LP since signing with Warner Records in 2021. A solo female pop artist from Brazil has never been a star in North America, but Anitta’s team and company are determined to make it happen – and it shows. Produced by Ryan Tedder, Stargate, and tracks by well-known hitmakers such as Andrés Torres and Mauricio Renkfo (who produced “Despacito”), the album’s elegant hooks, tense melodies, and brilliant production signal a clear attempt to break it up in America.
Speaking via video chat from her Miami home in late February, Anitta was naked on the couch in an orange Versace T-shirt. She looked tired, but her posture was impeccable. “I came back from Rio yesterday and was very tired. I was working non-stop on Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday,” he said, stroking the sleepy Italian hound Plínio. (He also had great posture.)
Born in Rio de Janeiro’s working-class Honório Gurgel neighborhood, Larissa Machado, 29, first rose to fame after Anitta posted a video of herself singing into a can of deodorant. His stage name, “Presença de Anita”, came later, which pays homage to a character he has long admired from a former Brazilian television show. On the show, she said that Anita would say she wants to wake up a different person every day: “She can be romantic, sensual, smart, and crazy at the same time.” Anitta also likes to play around with this idea.
“People have always wanted to describe women: The marrying type? Is he the type who likes to go out?” she loved it. “But I can be both, right?”
Anitta made a name for herself by performing at parties in Rio’s slums. funk carioca or bail funkA lively rhythm that emerged in the predominantly Black working-class neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro in the 1980s is the soundtrack of choice at these gatherings, where sound systems often blast the genre’s signature tamborzão. hit. “I started harassing everyone and asking if I could sing at their events, proibidas,” Anitta said.
sorry It’s in Portuguese because it’s forbidden. In the early 2000s, these bailes (dance parties) set the stage for gang violence, and under the guise of public safety, the police began violently sweeping events in Rio’s slums. while the species now playing in some of the country’s wealthiest neighborhoods and clubs popular with the flamboyant crowds in London and Berlin, its creators are still marginalized, especially those who have yet to become famous.
At the height of moral panic around Baile Even stars like funk and Anitta didn’t leave unscathed. When she performed alongside national icons Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil at the Olympic opening ceremony in 2016, critics opposed her inclusion at the event and dismissed her as a “favelada”.”
“Prejudice hurts,” Anitta said. “But artists like Caetano, Marisa Monte, Djavan and Bethânia have always told me they are the Anitta of their time,” Maria Bethânia said, referring to other Brazilian stars, mostly over 70 (Monte is the smallest in the world). group, in their 50s). “Everybody told them they were punks and now they’re icons.”
Veloso, one of the country’s most respected singer-songwriters who has collaborated with the singer in the past, praised her in an email. “Anitta is very competent, friendly, direct and lovely,” she wrote. It has captured the spirit of the times in a very impressive way.”
In the mid-2000s, MIA and Diplo began exporting funk carioca from Brazil through songs like “Baile Funk One” and a documentary.Favela in the Blast”, but the genre never made it onto the pop charts. Anitta nevertheless believes it has the potential for globalization. And while her new album is experimenting with a variety of styles – Gaga-inspired electro-pop”Men dont cry”, animated reggaeton of “Gata Ruff” — “Versions of Me” never completely severs ties with its roots.
Yet he knows that success often takes time. “The important things are patience and perseverance,” he said. “We have to do it step by step”
One Republic frontman Ryan Tedder, who wrote hit songs for Beyoncé and Taylor Swift, agreed to lead Anitta’s project midway through their first studio session. “He’s the hardest working person I’ve ever worked with,” she said over the phone. “There is no off button.”
Tom Corson, co-chairman and chief operating officer of Warner Records, acknowledged that “Anitta has what it takes to become a global superstar.” Is it the plan? “Obviously we want hit records,” Corson said. “And we want to see it as a unique force switching languages in the US and the global market.” The obvious comparison is Shakira.
Although “Versions of Me” is first and foremost an international project, Tedder and Anitta were adamant that Brazilian rhythms should be a part of it. “I didn’t want to deprive the Brazilian fan base of what he’s already built,” he said.
For “Fake Love” – a funk-inspired track featuring American rapper Saweetie – Anitta and Tedder flew Brazilian producers Tropkillaz to Los Angeles for a session. “The rhythmic movement of a true funk beat doesn’t use what’s called quantization,” said Tedder, referring to software that perfectly aligns the beats. “You have to program with natural human oscillation.” It took several tries to find the truth; Anitta sat and listened until they realized they had found someone.
Anitta realizes that she is a perfectionist first and foremost in her work. She worked with a speech therapist for years to minimize her accent and even re-recorded parts of the tracks while she was putting the finishing touches on her album. Would it matter if she sang in English with a strong accent? It shouldn’t happen, but it does, she said. “I realized that people would respect me less if I spoke slower or with an accent in meetings,” she said, remembering how she felt when she started doing business in America.
Things are different in his personal life, but when he’s lived most of it under the microscope, it’s hard to let go completely. Being bisexual, Anitta hid important aspects of her identity, including her sexuality, from the Brazilian press for years. “It was complicated because it was so taboo back then,” she said. “A lot of singers haven’t come out and I don’t judge them because I know people are really after me.”
A bodyguard realized he wanted to stop hiding after he had to chase someone who had photographed him kissing a woman at a party. “My mom knows I’ve kissed girls since I was 13, why should I care what other people think?” In a second interview, he said that he was raising both hands in exasperation as he bent over the sofa in a hotel room in Los Angeles.
Politically, some aspects of Anitta’s life have also long been under scrutiny. singer Criticized in 2018 when he did not directly condemn Brazil’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro, in the early stages of his campaign. But he argues there is a reason for it. “I was taking my religious initiative,” he said. In Candomblé, which mixes Yoruba, Fon, and Bantu beliefs, initiations typically require people to remain secluded for about 21 days: “I had no way of communicating with the outside world.”
When it became clear that Anitta would have to say something, she called a friend, lawyer, journalist, and political commentator Gabriela Prioli and asked for help. “I didn’t understand anything. I didn’t know what a congressman did or what a congressman did,” she said. “I’m not ashamed to say it because most Brazilians don’t do that.”
Eventually, Anitta found the talk so helpful that she decided to publish lectures on political education with Prioli. Instagramhopes to continue before this year’s election. While not supporting a candidate, Anitta is now firmly opposed to Bolsonaro. In late March, when lawyers representing the president’s party petitioned Brazil’s supreme electoral court to prevent artists from holding “political demonstrations” on their sets, Anitta encouraged other artists to oppose them. “To my friends who want to speak up: I’ll pay your fine,” she said in an Instagram story.
Bolsonaro and Anitta are occasionally freaking out on social media, where the singer has 61 million followers on Instagram alone. “She knows her conservative supporters don’t like me, so she’s using my name to get attention,” she said.
The number of followers will likely increase in the coming months. Popularized by “paso de Anitta”, Spanish for Anitta’s dance move – TikTok hit “Envolver” is the first song by a Brazilian artist to hit the top 10 on Spotify’s global chart. In late March, it reached number 1 there.
Anitta’s upcoming Coachella performance on the festival’s main stage marks another first for a Brazilian artist.
“I don’t want to think about it,” he said. “It worries me.” But it is is think about it.
Anitta said that rehearsals for the show were held in Rio, where she trained with a Brazilian and an American choreographer. (“I wanted to unite both cultures.”) And after that? “I only planned my life until Coachella,” she said half-jokingly.
“I’m not going to exaggerate everything,” he said. This is how music becomes stereotyped. “I know what I want to do: if things go well, great,” he added. “If they don’t, that’s great too.” He wasn’t always like this. “But I accomplished much more than I thought. If I had fallen asleep now and woke up at 40, I would still feel like I had done what I had decided to do.”
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