ANITTA COMES HOME

After achieving megawatt stardom in her native Brazil, the pop singer toured the globe, developing an international army of loyal fans. Now, as she tells Carolina Abbott Galvão, she’s finally embracing the city that made her.

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GROWING UP, the Brazilian singer Anitta didn’t travel a lot. “My family was poor, so we didn’t have money to go anywhere,” she said, speaking by phone from her home in Rio de Janeiro’s Barra da Tijuca neighborhood. Apart from a few trips to nearby beaches, she spent her childhood and most of her teenage years without seeing much of Brazil, never mind the rest of the world. “The farthest we’d go is to Arraial do Cabo, which is two hours away by car.”

When she first found success as an artist in the early 2010s, that all changed. Suddenly, she had to go places at a moment’s notice. Planes, airports, and suitcases became a regular part of her routine. And while adapting to this wasn’t always easy—she was, after all, traveling mostly for work—she soon started to appreciate parts of her new lifestyle. “I began getting to know new places, and enjoying it,” Anitta, who has collaborated with the likes of Madonna and The Weeknd, told me in Portuguese.

She also became increasingly popular. Her songs started playing in more and more clubs and bars and taxis, and her fan base grew more devoted. By 2016, she was performing at the Olympic opening ceremony with Brazilian music legends Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil. Eventually, she moved to the U.S. part-time to focus on developing her international career.

That hard work paid off. Not only is Anitta now Brazil’s most successful pop star, racking up more than 35 million monthly listeners on Spotify; she is also the first Brazilian artist to top the platform’s global chart, with her 2021 hit “Envolver,” a reggaeton-inspired pop song about the infectiousness of desire.