Nikolija

Nikolija Jovanović (Николија Јовановић; born 19 October 1989) is a Serbian singer and rapper.

Daughter of folk singer Vesna Zmijanac, Jovanović was born in Zagreb and raised in Belgrade.

Jovanović was born on 19 October 1989 in Zagreb.

She is the only child of singer Vesna Zmijanac and economist Vlada Jovanović, who operated as the chief of marketing at PGP RTS.

Her parents divorced shortly after she had been born and Jovanović has two half-siblings from her father's second marriage.

Nikolija spent her childhood in Belgrade.

In 1995, she appeared in her mother's music video for the song "Kad bih znala kako si".

For her senior year of high school Nikolija relocated to Athens, Greece.

Jovanović made her first public appearance in 2010 by competing alongside her mother on the reality TV series Survivor Srbija VIP: Philippines, where she was the first contestant to be voted out.

Nikolija subsequently voluntarily left the show on medical grounds.

Her music career began during her studies in Athens where she started performing in local nightclubs, claiming to have worked next to acts such as Tiësto, Armin van Buuren, Paul van Dyk and Swedish House Mafia.

At the beginning of 2011, she released her first song "Crazy 2 Night" featuring DJ Kas under the stage name "Nicole", but failed to make a significant success.

After graduating from college, Nikolija relocated back to Serbia where singer Milan Stanković introduced her to the prominent songwriters and producers Nebojša Arežina and Marko Perunučić, who would become her frequent collaborators.

Nikolija debuted in 2013 with the single "Ćao zdravo" and has since released three studio albums: №1 (2016), Yin & Yang (2019) and Aurora (2022), as well as numerous other standalone singles.

Her music videos have collectively accumulated over 700 million views on YouTube.

There, she subsequently started attending The School of Business & Economics at the American Deree College, from which she graduated in 2013 with a degree in international business.

She came on to the Serbian music scene with the house-influenced single "Ćao zdravo" featuring MC Techa, released in April 2013 under IDJTunes.

The single received polarizing public reception due to its provocative lyrics and S&M-inspired music video.

During the summer of 2013, she rose to further prominence after she had been featured on the song "Milion dolara" by Ana Nikolić, which also served as the title track for her fourth album.

In March 2014, Nikolija was announced as a contestant of the Serbian spin-off of Dancing with the Stars, where she finished in 8th place after six weeks of competing.

Also that year, she released "Alkohola litar" with Elitni Odredi and "Kako psole mene".

With these singles Nikolija embraced singing rather than just rapping and began crossing over to more commercial pop-folk sound.

With over 75 million views, Nikolija's collaboration with Elitni Odredi remains her highest performing music video.

"Opasna igra" was subsequently released in June the following year to commercial success as well.

Its music video was declared the most viewed Serbian video on YouTube in 2015.

In October, she released her first balladic single, called "Ljubavni maneken".

Nikolija made her runway debut for George Styler at the Belgrade Fashion Week in November the same year.

On 20 October 2016, she released her debut album, No1, under City Records.

It features previously released singles and three new songs: "101 Propušteni poziv", "Plavo more" and "Pucaj zbog nas".

The album was sold in 50,000 copies.

Nikolija released "Promeni mi planove" in March 2017.

In July, it was followed by the single "Loš momak", produced by Coby.

The single's music video has collected over 48 million views.

Same month, it was revealed that Jovanović would star as a post-apocalyptic warrior alongside Žarko Laušević and Sergej Trifunović in a Mad Max-inspired movie, titled Volja sinovljeva, directed by Nemanja Ćeranić.

In October 2017, she released "Moj tempo".

During the following year, Jovanović released three singles in succession: "Malo", "Nema limita" and "Slažem".

The music video for "Nema limita", which was directed by Ćeranić and inspired by Volja Sinovljeva, has amassed over 45 million views.

Her second studio album, Yin & Yang, was released under IDJTunes on 24 April 2019.

It was preceded by two official singles: the title track and "Nije lako biti ja" featuring rapper Fox, and it also included three standalone releases: "Loš momak", "Nema limita" and "Slažem" as bonus tracks on the physical edition.

A month after the album's release, it was announced that Nikolija and Relja Popović would release a duet, entitled "Meduza", as a part of Relja's first solo project.