"Nobody Could Figure Out What I Had"

Near the close of 2022, Anitta was dealing with a health scare that she didn't share with her fans. The singer, who is usually open with her legion of loyal listeners on social media — it comes with the territory when you're the first Brazilian artist, ever, to top Spotify charts  — explained that she was handling a cancer scare at the time and that she had been hospitalized for "months" without anyone figuring out what was happening.

“I had problems in my lungs, I had a cancer [scare]. I spent months in the hospital. Nobody could figure out what I had,” she said in her latest interview with InStyle. Even with a barrage of tests, there was still no answer to what was going on.

The singer explained that a spiritual treatment was recommended and that she sought the help of a shaman. Though that sounds like something that could do more harm than good, Anitta (real name: Larissa de Macedo Machado) said that somehow, it worked.

“I came back completely changed,” she said. When doctors put her through another round of testing, she was healed. Whatever that shaman did and whatever state of mind she'd managed to put herself into had done what it needed to.

Anitta continued, saying that after the ordeal, she realized that she'd also undergone a shift mentally. She used the newfound energy to reassess her approach to suffering, both phyiscally and psychologically. She explained that the emotional roller coaster that came with the health scare only made her tougher and cemented her approach to performing and presenting herself as a "bitch" who "destroys hearts."

It all goes down in the track "Used To Be," for any fans hoping for concrete evidence of the shift — though the real message is hidden beneath some very cheeky lyrics that go like this: "I used to be a hoe, but now I ain't no more / Been swimmin' through the water, now I'm back to shore / I look at who I did and I'm like, 'Oh, my lord.'"

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