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Early life

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Dua Lipa was born on 22 August 1995 in London, the firstborn child of Kosovo Albanian, Dukagjin Lipa and Anesa Lipa (née Rexha). They are from Pristina, Yugoslavia (present-day Kosovo[a]).[1] Her family is of Muslim background.[2] Through her maternal grandmother, Lipa is of Bosnian descent.[3] Her paternal grandfather, Seit Lipa, was a historian of Kosovo Institute of History who died of myocardial infarction in 1999.[3] Her father was pursuing a career in dentistry and then the SFR Yugoslavia banned teaching in Albanian at University of Pristina in 1991, therefore, he traveled to Bosnia and Herzegovina to continue his studies at the University of Sarajevo.[4] He got caught in the country's civil war and spent two months in besieged Sarajevo.[4] The couple traveled to London in 1992, around the time the siege of Sarajevo occurred,[1][5][6] settling in a refugee community from their home country in Camden.[7][8] Arriving in Britain, he and his wife worked waiting tables in bars and restaurants.[5][6] He later studied marketing and worked for a production company operating music festivals, such as Glastonbury and Reading. This allowed him to complete his studies at The Chartered Institute of Marketing.[7][3][9] For her part, Anesa studied law and, after emigrating to London, she dedicated herself to tourism;[3] from her marriage to Dukagjin, they had two more children: Rina in May 2001 and Gjin in December 2005, who grew up together with their older sister in West Hampstead.[7][9]

Lipa was influenced by the taste in music of her father,[10][11][12] who was the lead singer and guitarist of the Kosovan rock band Oda,[7][6] which split up in 1998 after the release of their last album, 1998.[9] Dukagjin continued to play at home, including his own compositions and popular songs by artists such as David Bowie, Bob Dylan, Radiohead, Sting, The Police and Stereophonics.[11][12][13] In this family environment, she started singing at the age of five.[14] The following year she discovered new sources of inspiration from her first records, Whoa, Nelly! by Nelly Furtado and Missundaztood by Pink, which she described as "a significant part of her life" and which hold "special meaning" for her,[12][13] as well as Christina Aguilera, Destiny's Child, Kendrick Lamar, Chance the Rapper, Schoolboy Q, ASAP Rocky, Prince, Blondie, Jamiroquai, Moloko, Missy Elliott and Madonna.[10][15][16][17][18]

She attended Fitzjohn's Primary School,[19][20] where her music lessons included the cello, though she found it unsuitable due to her small stature.[1] When she auditioned to enter the school choir, she was rejected because her voice was "too low" to reach the high notes and the teacher told her that "she could not sing".[1][11][21] At the age of nine, she began weekend singing lessons at the Sylvia Young Theatre School, where her teacher, Ray, who helped her develop her vocal skills as well as discovering her desire to become a musician.[1][5] He made Lipa sing in front of older students, which increased her self-confidence.[22] At the age of eleven, after finishing primary school, she and her family moved back to Pristina after Kosovo declared independence.[5][14]

Move to Pristina

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Her move to the capital of Kosovo was motivated by the work destination of her father, Dukagjin,[5] a marketing entrepreneur, who–shortly after settling in Pristina, specifically in the Bregu i Diellit neighborhood where he had grown up–founded a communications agency for marketing.[9][23] Lipa looked forward to the move and, upon arrival in Kosovo, she was "fascinated" by the feeling of "community" and "safeness" she perceived from the capital.[5] The adaptation process that she developed was also "magnificent" and she soon managed to feel "comfortable" and "happy" in her new residence, as she had the support of several acquaintances of her parents who frequently came to visit them in London together with their children, with whom they asked go to the same school.[5]

Mileniumi i Tretë school (pictured), the place where Lipa complemented her secondary studies during her stay in Kosovo.[24]

Lipa did not have much difficulty with the local language either, because Albanian is her first language and she spoke it at home with her parents since she was a child, although she could not write or read it fluently.[5][21][25] She attended the Mileniumi i Tretë school in Pristina, where she learned more about the Albanian language and participated in various concert activities that helped her reaffirm her idea of starting a musical career.[24][26][27]

By the time Lipa arrived in Kosovo, she coincided with the arrival of rap artists from North America who were performing in the country, thus she was also influenced by this style of music.[5] Additionally, her father was also involved in the production of several of those concerts through his job at a telecommunications agency, therefore the first concert that she attended was the one by Method Man & Redman. She also had the opportunity to attend concerts by Snoop Dogg, Busta Rhymes, and 50 Cent of whom she was particularly enthusiastic at the time and described his performance as the most memorable she ever attended.[5][15][28] Her stay in Kosovo was decisive in her awareness of her personality as a singer and she soon became aware of that she did not have "many opportunities" to launch a career there, and that the only way to achieve worldwide recognition was if she returned to London.[5]

Return to London

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Her desire to return to London was made possible by the daughter of her parents' acquaintances, who was going to the English capital to do her master's degree, which made them feel more confident to let her go without their company.[8][29] On her return to the city, aged 15, she stayed in Kilburn, where she lived for some time before moving to Camden, and began her secondary education at Parliament Hill School where she achieved her A-Levels in Politics, Psychology, English and Media and in turn re-entered Sylvia Young Theatre School part-time.[29] She claimed that her parents did not push her to get involved with music, however, she decided not to have a higher education in university so that she could focus only on music.[30] At the age of 14, she wrote her first song, "Lions & Tigers & Bears", inspired by The Wizard of Oz (1939),[31] which she published on her SoundCloud page as her first demo on February 2012.[32] She has stated that she was influenced by the discovery of Justin Bieber on YouTube which inspired her to take the same route.[6][33] Her first job was in retail when she was 16 years old, as well as on the doorstep of nightclubs.[23] Lipa also combined her musical vocation with various occupations, working as a waitress at the Mexican restaurant La Bodega Negra in Soho,[29] as a hostess at a nightclub in Mayfair and as a model for the ASOS Marketplace virtual catalog, until the agency insisted that she had to lose weight to do catwalk shows, something she refused to do.[18][29][34] This period of her life would later inspired her 2016 single "Blow Your Mind (Mwah)".[21][35] She began posting her videos of her covers of songs like "If I Ain't Got You" by Alicia Keys and "Beautiful" by Christina Aguilera on YouTube.[14]

Although her videos did not reach great popularity,[6] she took a "portfolio" to London clubs like KOKO where she thought she would meet people from the music industry who she could show them to.[8] Even though her intention was not to become a model, she got involved with Topshop considering "that could help her get out there", which would later cause her to sign with a modeling agency, whose agency landed her a role as a "singer" in an television advertisement for The X Factor in 2013.[8][36] Her participation in said role introduced her to a producer who at the time worked with One Direction and Ed Sheeran, which led her to obtain an offer for a publishing contract. Therefore, she attracted the attention of the Lana del Rey's then representative, Ben Mawson, a Warner Bros. manager that earned her a management deal with TAP Management which put her in touch with several producers, including Emile Haynie, Andrew Wyatt and Stephen Kozmeniuk, to learn the fundamental of the songwriter trade.[29] At first, she was more interested in "discovering" her sound than in landing a record deal; she wanted to have a sound like a cross between rapper J. Cole and Nelly Furtado, but the reaction of the producers was not exactly positive.[13][29] But then when she wrote "Hotter Than Hell" and production at the time was just a piano and a kick drum, she claimed that she liked the "darkness" behind it, the pop chorus with a "rappy" flow to the verses, all sung in a lower register.[13][29] That song was the one that helped her land a record deal, which she signed in the summer of 2015 with Warner Music Group.[37][27] Her first single, "New Love" was released late August of that same year and received rave reviews,[29] such as Lindsey Weber's review for The Fader in which she argued that it is "surprisingly heavy, with a throbbing heartbeat that underlines her voice, which is husky and mature, like that of Joss Stone or Lady Gaga."[34] However, to achieve public recognition it was necessary to wait for the release of her next single, "Be the One" in October 2015.[29]

We've seen artists who might get half a good song out of 10 writing sessions; with Dua, one in five or one in four is a banger. She gets results out of other people as well, because her personality is so engaging and she is so charismatic. She definitely has that special something.

— Ben Mawson on Lipa's songwriting[38]
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  5. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Nash, Ed (8 November 2016). "A Tale of Two Cities". The Line of Best Fit. Archived from the original on 31 July 2017. Retrieved 10 January 2021.
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  11. ^ a b c Davidson, Amy (11 December 2015). "Meet your new favourite popstar Dua Lipa - just don't call her the new Lana Del Rey". Digital Spy. Archived from the original on 19 March 2019. Retrieved 11 January 2021.
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  19. ^ Chapman, Helen (30 November 2017). "Dua Lipa's former school plays New Rules to pupils each morning". Camden New Journal. Archived from the original on 13 June 2018. Retrieved 14 January 2021.
  20. ^ "Londoner's Diary: How Shulman is filling the void left by Vogue". Evening Standard. 5 December 2017. Archived from the original on 14 January 2021. Retrieved 14 January 2021.
  21. ^ a b c Pareles, Jon (31 May 2017). "Dua Lipa Was Raised on Pop Bangers. Now She Writes Them". The New York Times. Archived from the original on 21 July 2017. Retrieved 11 January 2021.
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  24. ^ a b "Në cilën shkollë shkoi Dua Lipa në Prishtinë (Foto)". Telegrafi (in Albanian). 17 March 2016. Archived from the original on 18 March 2016. Retrieved 11 January 2021.
  25. ^ Needham, Alex (14 August 2020). "Dua Lipa Is Quarantine's Queen of Pop". W. Archived from the original on 22 September 2020. Retrieved 11 January 2021.
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