Larissa de Macedo Machado was born March 30, 1993 and is better known by her stage name Anitta (formely MC Anitta). She is a Brazilian singer, songwriter, actress, and dancer.
Anitta was born in Rio de Janeiro, the youngest daughter of Míriam Macedo and Mauro Machado; her brother Renan Machado serves as her artistic producer. Her mother raised the two children by herself.
She began her career at 8 years old singing in the choir of Santa Luzia Church in Rio de Janeiro by the intervention of her maternal grandparents. At 11 years old, with the allowance she got, she decided to take English classes. She later received dance lessons provided by her mother’s teacher. At 16, she finished a course in administration at a technical school in Rio de Janeiro. A year later, she decided to pursue an artistic career. That same year, she was the winner of the “Revelation of Music” award.
Anitta’s stage name was inspired by the character Anita, from Rede Globo TV series Presença de Anita. She thought the character was amazing because she could be sexy without looking vulgar, girl and woman at the same time.
In 2010, Anitta was invited by funk carioca producer Renato Azevedo (known as Batutinha) to perform some tests after he saw one of her videos singing. After being approved, she signed with independent recording label Furacão 2000. That same year she released her first song on radio stations in Rio de Janeiro, the promotional single “Eu Vou Ficar”, which was included on the Armagedom DVD, released by Furacão 2000. Advised by her producer, she decided to put another “t” in the stage name. A year later, the song “Fica Só Olhando” was included on the second version of the DVD.
In June 2012, Kamilla Fialho, after watching a performance on stage by Anitta, offered to be her manager, paying a fine of $46.000 required to release the singer from her contract with Furacão 2000, later signing her to Kamilas’s company K2L. In January 2013, due to the success of the song “Meiga e Abusada” in Rio de Janeiro, Anitta signed a recording contract with Warner Music Group. Her debut, self-titled debut album was released in June 2013. Sales to the tickets for the recording of her first live album went on sale in November 2013. The event took place in Rio de Janeiro at HSBC Arena on February 15, 2014 and was attended by about 10,000 people. The album was previously titled Fantástico Mundo de Anitta, but was later renamed to Meu Lugar. Her second studio album, was named Ritmo Perfeito. In April 2014, she made her acting debut as Helena Boccato in the comedy film Copa de Elite. In August 2014, she founded her own management company, Rodamoinho Produções Artísticas.
Her third studio album Bang was released in October 2015. In 2016, Anitta made her debut as a TV hostess on the third season of the Multishow program Música Boa Ao Vivo. The singer was also featured on a remix of the song “Ginza”, by singer J Balvin. In August 2016, she released a single titled “Sim ou Não” featuring Colombian singer Maluma, and performed at the 2016 Summer Olympics opening ceremony along with singers Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil after the parade of delegations. The next month, she signed a contract with talent agency William Morris Endeavor.
In May 2017, “Switch”, a collaboration with Australian rapper Iggy Azalea, became her first single in English to be released. In June of the same year, the American group Major Lazer released “Sua Cara”, along with her and drag queen singer Pabllo Vittar. The song is part of the band’s fourth EP, Know No Better. In a matter of a few hours, the audio work exceeded the mark of 5 million views on YouTube. After its release, the song became an international hit, appearing as one hundred most played in Global Spotify, and spent more than five weeks on Billboard’s Dance/Electronic Songs chart, making it the only Portuguese-language song in the United States.
On September 3, Anitta released her first English-language single “Will I See You”, a collaboration with Grammy award-winning producer and songwriter Poo Bear. It was the first song of the singer’s project entitled CheckMate, in which she would release a new song a month. On October 13, in partnership with Swedish DJ Alesso, Anitta released the second song from CheckMate, titled “Is That for Me”. On November 19, the singer released, in her second collaboration with J Balvin, another track from the CheckMate project, “Downtown”.
In April 2018, she debuted her new TV show on Multishow titled Anitta Entrou no Grupo. In June, she performed at Rock in Rio festival in Lisbon. She also made concerts in nightclubs in Paris and London as part of the Made in Brazil tour. In September, she debuted as one of the coaches on La Voz… México. In November, Anitta released a multilingual extended play (EP) titled Solo, which has three songs in different languages, among them “Veneno” and “Não Perco Meu Tempo”. Anitta also announced that all songs on the EP would have their respective music videos, which were released simultaneously on the same date as the EP and were the subject of a Shots Studios-produced docu-series titled Vai Anitta, which aired on Netflix. In April 2019, the singer’s fourth studio album, entitled Kisses, was released. It was her first visual and trilingual album.
In June 2020, Anitta signed a recording contract with Warner Records in the U.S., ahead of her U.S. debut album expected to release later in 2020. The album was executive produced by Ryan Tedder. During the social isolation due to the pandemic of COVID-19, Anitta premiered in May directly from her home the program ‘Anitta Dentro da Casinha’, broadcast by the channel Multishow.
In August 2020, Anitta released her first single in Italy with Fred de Palma, “Paloma” which became one of the most shamaz’ed songs of the month in the country. In September,2020, Anitta started a new era in her international career, launching “Me Gusta”, in partnership with Cardi B and Myke Towers.
Anitta is bisexual and identifies as part of the LGBTQ+ community. In an interview for Trip magazine in 2017, she stated that she is undergoing therapy and also that if she did not pursue her artistic career, she would be a happy psychologist. In January 2019, after watching the documentary Cowspiracy (2014), she became vegan.
Aside from her native Portuguese, she can also speak some Italian and can speak English and Spanish fluently.
