Anika Rose Moa was born on the 21st of May in 1980, in Auckland, New Zealand, she later moved Christchurch where she was raised with her mum, Bernadette, and siblings. Her mum would often sleep in the same bed with her kids and play ukelele to them, teaching how to play aswell. Anika would even participate in the small shows that the primary schools would put on, then running home and telling her mum all about it, her mother not being there because he would have to care of all the other children. Anika grew up listening to what she described as ‘Bluesly soul stuff’. When she met her father she was 13 and he took her up north and took her to meet all of the family, where he taught her how to play guitar left-handed. When Anika returned home after her 6-week trip she played non-stop once she got home. At her time at Hornby High School, Anika participated in some Rock Quest bands where she should have played electric or acoustic guitar, as that was her instrument, but she was in a class where all the boys played the same and played the bass and drums as well, so Anika went into the bands as a singer and the other band members would never let her play her instrument. She has specifically mentioned multiple times how bad each of her bands and songs were, even though she wrote most of the songs herself. In 1999, Anika entered Rock Quest again, but as a solo artist this time, playing her own songs that had appeared on her first album two years later, although she did not win, Anika was able to make it as far as the final eight of around five hundred entries. After finishing her final year at Hornby High she went and became a student at the Nelson School of Music, where she stayed and studied for two months before getting homesick and returning to Christchurch. Eventually, her friend who had been getting her chances to do small gigs introduced her to the man who soon became her manager. Soon enough she had signed with two major record labels, one in the U.S named Atlantic Music and another in N.Z, Warner Music. Soon after in the U.S, she released her first album, Thinking Room and she became New Zealand’s favourite artist.