Known as the Queen of Brazilian Pop, Anitta was born Larissa de Macedo Machado in Honório Gurgel, a working-class neighborhood in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. In 2010, a year after graduating from high school, she was discovered on YouTube by Brazilian record producer Renato Azevedo. Shortly after, she signed a recording contract with Furacão 2000, an independent label known for funk carioca (or baile funk), an aggressive subgenre of hip-hop that originated on the streets of Rio de Janeiro. But her music career really took off when she signed with Warner Music Brasil in 2013 and released the popular dance-pop single "Meiga e Abusada."
Anitta took her stage name from the Brazilian TV miniseries Presença de Anita (2001), a dramatic story about a provocative young woman who becomes a muse for a struggling middle-aged novelist. Anitta, who added the extra "t" to the name at the suggestion of her producer, admired the character because she could "be sexy without being vulgar - a girl and woman at the same time."
Anitta's popularity reached new heights in 2022 when her sexy reggaeton number "
Envolver" (from the album
Versions Of Me) caused an international sensation, becoming her most-charted single and making her the first solo Latin artist to reach #1 on the Spotify Global Chart. She also made history that year as the first Brazilian performer to win an MTV Video Music Award when "Envolver" took the prize in the Best Latin category.
Anitta achieved another historic feat in 2022 when she became the first Brazilian solo artist to perform on the main stage at Coachella. Her set featured special guest stars like Snoop Dogg and Diplo.
After the worldwide success of "Envolver," Anitta was poised for mainstream stardom in the US, but there were so many versions of her on the album that her true self was lost in the mix. Her disappointment, along with a health scare, made her reevaluate her career and abandon efforts to dilute her sound for Western sensibilities. For her next release, Funk Generation, featuring "Funk Rave" and "Mil Veces," she ditched her record label and leaned into the edgy baile-funk flavor of her youth with lots of room for experimentation. It became the first funk carioca album to be nominated for a Grammy when it competed in the Best Latin Pop Album category at the 2025 ceremony.
Anitta guest-starred on season 7 of the Netflix Spanish drama Elite, playing a PE teacher who helps a student get out of an abusive relationship.
She released her first English-language single, "Switch," in 2017 as a collaboration with Australian rapper Iggy Azalea. She's also teamed up with several other artists, including American EDM duo Major Lazer ("Sua Cara"), Colombian singer J Balvin ("Downtown"), Madonna ("Faz Gostoso"), Cardi B ("
Me Gusta"), and Black Eyed Peas ("Explosion"), among others.
Anitta was nominated for Best New Artist at the 2023 Grammy Awards but lost to American jazz singer
Samara Joy.
One of her earliest musical memories is listening to "
Dreamlover" by Mariah Carey.
In her downtime, she likes to binge movies. She counts Charlie Chaplin films and the Tom Hanks movie Forrest Gump (1994) among her favorites.
She co-directs many of her own music videos. Many times, she envisions a video while she's recording the song in the studio. Other times, she takes inspiration from movies - for example, in "Funk Rave," the scene where a chicken interrupts a soccer game was inspired by the opening scene of the 2002 film City Of God that depicts a gang chasing a runaway chicken.
In 2022, she launched the fragrance line Puzzy by Anitta, with a variety of scents designed to be used on intimate body parts.
Anitta is bisexual. In the 2018 Netflix docuseries Vai Anitta, she explained how being a member of the LGTBQ+ community was taboo in Brazil and she was at risk of losing brand deals and other opportunities if the public found out. But she didn't want to be seen as a hypocrite, so she told her publicist the time was right to come out.
