Tataee

Early life and education

Tataee was born Vlad Irimia on October 17, 1976 in Sebeş, a city in Alba County, central Romania, southern Transylvania. His father was as a mechanical engineer on various construction sites for hydroelectric power stations in Transylvania, while his mother worked as an accountant. Irimia spent his childhood years in numerous blue-collar working colonies adjacent to the various dams his father was hired to worked on. His mother, an amateur singer, would occasionally perform publicly at friends' weddings and baptism parties, while also encouraging the young Irimia to sing. In 1981, his family relocated to Caransebeș and then to Turnu Măgurele for the ultimately failed construction project of Iron Gates III, after which, in 1990, his father moved the family to his native Bucharest, where Irimia, the oldest of three children, attended the Alexandru Ioan Cuza highschool in Titan, where he swiftly became acquainted with gang violence, while also gaining an interest in chemistry and geometry. He dropped out of college after the first semester when he realized it was keeping him back from a full-time musical career and focused on producing B.U.G. Mafia's second album.

Before B.U.G. Mafia (1990-1992)

As Romania had been a communist country until late 1989, western music was banned by Nicolae Ceauşescu's regime and official releases of hip hop albums were virtually impossible to find on the Romanian music market. Tataee himself stated in an interview for CNN that he got acquainted with rap music after the political regime switch that occurred in Romania in 1989. As a more liberal political system replaced the totalitarian rule of communism, heavy bootlegging of American music occurred on the Eastern European market. Inspired by Public Enemy and N.W.A, Tataee tried steering his professional options towards becoming a rapper and started working on his own music. By 1993, when he met his first collaborator, Daddy Caddy, he had only recorded one song and had little professional perspective. The official press release for B.U.G. Mafia states that they first met in late 1993 and recorded their first track together in 1994.

B.U.G. Mafia (1993–Present)

In 1993, Tataee met with Dragoș Vlad-Neagu who would become known as Daddy Caddy in Bucharest. They started talking about Vlad-Neagu's Cypress Hill cap and discovered they had a common interest in rap music and they both already tried to make music so they decided to start a group which they named B.U.G.(Bucharest UnderGround) Their first rap aliases were Klax 187 and Doom(later changed to Mr.Juice), showing a heavy influence from the American rap scene, especially gangsta rap. They recorded their first track rapping in English with the help of Adi Niculescu, a then well-known radio personality who produced one of the first hip hop radio shows in Romania called "YO! Rap is moving!". The song was influenced by the N.W.A hit single Straight Outta Compton, being significantly named "Straight Outta Da Hell" and it got its first radio airplay on Radio Uniplus where it was actually recorded.

B.U.G. recorded more tracks in English, producing their own beats with help from Romeo Vanica, a well known producer, who had a professional keyboard. In 1994, they had their first live appearance in one of the first Romanian hip hop shows, made possible by Bogdan "DJ Sleek" Untea, a famous Romanian hip-hop DJ and one of the first Romanians to pursue this career. Still looking for new rappers they met with Demonii ("The Demons"), one of the few Romanian hip-hop crews to rap in Romanian at the time. One of the members was Alin Demeter, also known as drama Drama then, later as Uzzi, who joined the group in 1995 and at the same time they changed their name adding Mafia so the Romanian public would get better acquainted with their style. They also stopped writing lyrics in English and switched to Romanian for the same reason. In the summer of 1995 they signed their first professional music contract to record an album with Amma Sound.

Move to Casa Productions (2001–2003)

In 1997, Tataee provided vocals and produced several tracks on La Familia's debut album, Băieți De Cartier (Hoodboys), paving the group's way to hip hop superstardom in Romania and remaining a frequent collaborator until the feud that occurred between them in 2003. Later, in 1998, he produced XXL&10 Grei's whole debut album, Personajul Negativ (The Bad Guy) and although the album sold poorly, it was met with unanimous positive reviews by music critics and fans as well, establishing Grasu XXL and his collaborator, Paco "10 Grei" as two of the most prominent figures in Romanian hip hop. The B.U.G. Mafia Prezintă Casa (B.U.G. Mafia Presents Casa) album, released February 20, 2002, featured songs by his group, B.U.G. Mafia, as well as by newly signed Casa artists and the single Cine E Cu Noi (Who's With Us), intended as a new milestone in Romanian hip hop. Tataee mentioned the project in various interviews before 2002, the year the label was officially established, describing it initially as a record distribution company that later turned into a record label, so the group could independently produce their own albums and sign new artists. Also in 2002, he remixed Paraziţii's hit single "În Focuri" and the resulting track was included on the single's commercial release.

The turning point for Casa Productions occurred in 2006 when Grasu XXL, formerly of XXL & 10 Grei, released his debut solo album, Curaj (Courage) that spawned hit singles such as "Fără Filtru" (Without Filtre) or "Curaj" (Courage) and helped establish Casa Productions as one of Romania's high-profile music labels. During this time, Tataee also started his own record label, separate from Casa Productions which was a group effort from B.U.G. Mafia, Legend Audio and signed the first artist he was going to work with and develop separately from B.U.G. Mafia, JerryCo.

Move to Legend Audio (2004–2005)

During the time Tataee answered fan questions on B.U.G. Mafia's unofficial fan forum, he stated that outside the Casa Productions project, every group member had founded his own record label so that they could work with various artists independently from the group's releases and projects. Tataee founded Legend Audio around 2002 but, due to the vast amount of work that being a member of B.U.G. Mafia implied, the first artist to sign with him, JerryCo, did so only in 2005.

JerryCo, a Romanian rapper had released two independent albums while still part of Agresiv, the well-known Romanian producing duo. JerryCo met Tataee in 2004, as the latter heard a demo containing some songs and called him to discuss a record contract. It was only a year after this meeting occurred that JerryCo actually signed with the label, after making significant progress on his own, enough to impress Tataee and determine him to finally start the Legend Audio project. The debut album, "Totul E Posibil" (Everything Is Possible) was released after a five-year work period and Tataee produced every track and provided vocals for the lead single "Stai! (Ești În Pericol)" (Wait! You're In Danger). This also marked the beginning of Tataee's career as a music manager as he also signed on to oversee JerryCo's whole musical career and not only work on music, as he previously did.

Focus on production (2003–Present)

Besides overseeing the production for every B.U.G. Mafia album, Tataee proved to have a strong interest for work as a music producer since the late-90s, helping launch careers for acclaimed acts such as La Familia, XXL & 10 Grei or Mahsat, to name a few. Following the success of Băieţii Buni, Tataee focused on producing songs and albums for other artists. In 2004, he produced the third album for raggamuffin Bucharest-based group M&G, also providing vocals for the album's lead single, "Asalt Raggafonic" (Raggaphonic Assault). Tataee's work on the album earned them an MTV Romanian Music Awards nomination in 2005, in the "Best New Act" category. He produced Bitză's "Urmatorul Pas" (The Next Step), the first single from his debut album, "Sevraj" (Withdrawal). The track proved to be a great success, launching Bitză's career while providing significant record sales. He also worked with Romanian pop group Akcent, producing and writing their 2004 single "Poveste De Viață" (Life Story).

He produced and provided vocals for the single "Fără Egal" (Like No One Else) by R&B singer Cristina Spătar. In 2007, he produced the lead single of pop singer Adriana Rusu's debut album, "Sentimente" (Feelings), a track called "Noi Doi" (Us Two) on which he also performed two of the song's verses. He worked with Andreea Antonescu, formerly of the pop group Andre to produce her 2008 single "Ridica Mâinile" (Raise Your Hands). In 2006, together with bandmate Daddy Caddy, Tataee served as the executive producer of Grasu XXL's debut solo album, "Curaj" (Courage) and while he had virtually no contribution to the musical production, he helped create an album that would spawn one of the most successful singles in the Romanian hip hop industry, "Fără Filtru" (Without Filtre), also appearing in the song's music video. Although in 2009 he produced and released the second volume of B.U.G. Mafia's anniversary album, he has been generally hard to spot in the Romanian media outside a handful of interviews promoting the album's release and his Twitter page where he constantly interacts with his fans. In 2009 he also worked with Romanian hip hop artist Marijuana to produce a track on her untitled 2010 second album. Tataee has also worked Marcel Sârbu, a former owner of "Dumars Club", a well known Bucharest club, who occasionally released hip hop singles under the stage name "DMS" to help promote his venue. "Pe Față" (Truthfully), featuring Cristina Spătar and "Cumva, Cândva" (Somehow, Sometime), featuring Anemona Niculescu were both written and produced by Tataee for DMS.

Relationships and family

Irimia has been in a stable relationship with his girlfriend for several years and is currently planning to get married sometime in the future. His first child, Antonia Olga, was born in early 2011. He also has an older brother and a younger sister who also live in Bucharest. Over the time he has jokingly stated in various interviews that his parents were not thrilled with the job he chose but that ultimately they have grown to be proud. For many years, he was also an avid supporter of FC Dinamo Bucureşti.

Car accident

On the night of August 9, 2008, while driving from a B.U.G. Mafia concert from Periam to Lipova, Irimia tried to go around another vehicle and collided with a scooter, seriously injuring the man driving it. Police investigations concluded that Irimia did not take the necessary measures before overtaking the vehicle in front of him and, as the victim was rushed to the hospital with both legs and a few ribs broken, his driver's license was suspended for three months and a criminal record was issued against him. The conclusions of the investigations were that, had the man driving the scooter not been wearing a helmet, he would have probably been killed in the accident, making Irimia liable for serious jail time. He went on to give details of an early 2008 incident when, driving from another concert, a truck lost control on the road passing their car by very closely. He turned a hard right and the fact that they crashed on the side of the road was actually what saved them from being seriously injured or even killed from colliding with the runaway truck.

Musical influences and style

Tataee has said that he uses multiple instruments while working in the studio, preferring to use virtual instruments and the computer to arrange and produce his instrumentals. His Twitter official page features various conversations with inquiring fans, with Irimia stating that he prefers virtual instrument manufacturers such as Native Instruments and Steinberg. He cites Dr. Dre and Public Enemy's Bomb Squad as his primary musical influences. During the time he answered fan questions on the bugmafia93.ro message board, he used Steinberg Cubase to sequence and mix his beats, but he has since switched to ProTools HD. Other equipment he uses include keyboards from such manufacturers as Korg, Clavia, Kurzweil, Yamaha and Roland. The Hammond organ is also frequently present in his work. After founding Casa Productions and releasing B.U.G. Mafia prezintă CASA with B.U.G. Mafia in 2002, his music became more diverse and, while retaining typical g-funk elements such as high pitched synths pioneered by Dr. Dre and Above The Law in their productions a decade earlier, it included new instruments such as multi-layered guitars and string arrangements. He also started using fewer vocals samples (as he had done on "Limbaj De Cartier", "Raid Mafiot 2" or "De Cartier" on the De Cartier album in the late 90s) preferring to have Casa Productions artists such as Villy or Mario to provide backing vocals for his productions instead. The 2003 Băieţii Buni album by B.U.G. Mafia features a completely different production style, with mellow, guitar-driven beats that, over the years, has become a production trademark for Tataee.

In the mid 90s Tataee started collaborating with Camil Beldeanu, a Romanian keyboardist who had worked with various Romanian artists and who went on to be one of the most prominent producers and arrangers to work with Romanian hip hop artists in the late 90s and early 2000s. Beldeanu shared production credits with Irimia on many of his productions for B.U.G. Mafia's albums, including their anniversary albums Viaţa noastră (Vol.1) and Viaţa noastră (Vol.2).

Work ethic

Tataee has stated that he is a perfectionist and is known to pressure the artists with whom he records to give flawless performances. He has refined this technique over the years, as he stated the most important reason of the quality difference between B.U.G. Mafia's 1998 De Cartier and Băieţii Buni, released in 2003, was the significant larger amount of hours spent in the studio recording vocals for the latter. On his official Twitter account, he shared some details of his 2004 sessions with Romanian pop-act Akcent for their single "Poveste De Viață" (Life Story), saying that he had to push them very hard to come up with that performance, as they were not used with his work style and usually spent less time working on a song.

A consequence of his perfectionism is that some artists that initially sign deals with B.U.G. Mafia's Casa Productions label never release albums. Aside from B.U.G. Mafia themselves, only Mahsat, M&G and Grasu XXL have released albums in the label's 9-year history. A significant delay of the second volume of B.U.G. Mafia's anniversary album release occurred when Ines Sound & Video, the Bucharest-based recording studio where the group was working finished their new recording room that could provide a higher quality in 2007 and, as a consequence, all the material finished up to that point was scrapped and re-recorded. B.U.G. Mafia's official website, despite being announced on the 2002 B.U.G. Mafia prezintă CASA album cover, was released to the general public only 8 years later, in mid-2010. Tataee said that this was also a consequence of the fact that an official website that he would approve of would take an enormous amount of time to create. Romanian rapper JerryCo, who signed with Tataee's Legend Audio in 2005 only released his debut album in 2010 after 5 years of work. Other noteworthy acts to leave Casa Productions without releasing albums were Paco "10 Grei" of XXL&10 Grei and urban soul artist Mario who has been working on his debut album, "Liber Pe Pământ" (Free On Earth) since 2005. B.U.G. Mafia were also planning to release a hip-hop clothing line but this project neither came to fruition as Tataee and his collaborators' demands were too high to make products that could actually bring in profits.

Collaborators

Like most hip hop producers in the '90s, Tataee made use of various music samples in his productions. This has led to controversy among B.U.G. Mafia's fans: as none of the samples he used have been credited on any of the covers of the albums he has worked on it fueled rumors of plagiarism. As "UCMR-ADA" (The Composers' Union in Romania) had broken off all contacts with ASCAP in the communist era, clearing any sample from records released in the United States was virtually impossible, so Tataee chose to use whatever samples he wanted to use without any permission, since he had no legal way to do otherwise. He cleared this issue himself in a post on the B.U.G. Mafia fan message board, while conversing with the fans:

Let me tell you about the 'stolen' instrumentals. Hip hop producers used, since the beginning, elements from other songs, this technique being called SAMPLING. In any country in the world there is an artist's association where every artist goes and subscribes their score and song lyrics, they are archived into a database, thus creating the copyright term. ... Let me give you an example: if B.U.G. Mafia wants to use a sample of Snoop Dogg's What's My Name we would have to call UCMR (Uniunea Compozitorilor și Muzicienilor Români - Romanian Composers and Musicians' Union) and they should give us the right to use the sample through their connection with ASCAP, that's the association that holds Snoop Dogg's records and send the money percent from our sales and airplay. This is where the problem comes as UCMR hasn't sent any money outside the country for years and whatever contract that they give us would be useless if we would be sued for sample clearing. We tried to contact ASCAP but they can give rights for sample using only in the United States of America. So we decided to use whatever we used from other artists considering that we had no legal way to do this.

Despite Tataee making use of samples in his productions, especially in the 90s, covers of albums on which he worked on give insight on a number of musicians he has collaborated with over the years. Camil Beldeanu is one of his most frequent collaborators, being credited as a keyboardist on every B.U.G. Mafia album since 1997's IV: Deasupra Tuturor and, although on this album, he is also credited with guitar work, since 1998's De Cartier, guitarist Cristi Andrei has done a considerable amount of work for Tataee. An electric guitar solo from the 1998 B.U.G. Mafia song "Poveste Fără Sfarșit" (Endless Story), which is famous among the fans as being one of the group's most soulful songs, has also been played by Cristi Andrei. The acoustic guitar on the remade version of "Poveste Fără Sfarșit" from Viaţa noastră (Vol.2) was played by Vlad Crețu, guitarist for Romanian groups Todomondo and Hara. Cristi Andrei shared guitar duties with Andrei "The Cat" Vlad, a Romanian session guitarist on the 2002 compilation album B.U.G. Mafia prezintă CASA. Andrei created the guitar riff playing through "După blocuri" the first single from the B.U.G. Mafia album of the same name and one of the group's most famous songs and he also returned to work with Tataee on both volumes of "Viața Noastră". Gabriel Mitran and Viorel Sârbu composed basslines for Tataee's productions during work for De Cartier and După blocuri albums. More recent collaborators include Ștefan Mihăilescu, doing guitar work for B.U.G. Mafia's first anniversary album, Viaţa noastră (Vol.1) and even being credited with keyboards on the second volume of the anniversary album, on the "O lume nebună, nebună de tot" (A crazy, crazy world) remake. Florin Sever, a Romanian film score composer did the string arrangements for both anniversary albums of B.U.G. Mafia.

Although Tataee is the main producer for B.U.G. Mafia, bandmates Uzzi and Caddy are credited as co-producers on many of the group's songs. Tataee has said on his official Twitter account that they occasionally contribute in the production process and that this will probably occur in the future too. When asked about considering other producer's work for the group, he answered that this is also a possibility, but any composition will be produced by himself, thus maintaining his position as the group's producer. This was the case on JerryCo's debut album, "Orice E Posibil" (Anything Is Possible) where, despite producing the whole album, Bucharest-based production duo Agresiv have contributed to many of the album's compositions, being credited accordingly. Frequent B.U.G. Mafia collaborator Villy has also done keyboard work for Tataee, especially on songs where he was featured as a vocalist.

As far as post-production, B.U.G. Mafia album covers credited Romanian songwriters Jolt Kerestely and his son, Andrei Kerestely and sound engineer Eddy Schneinder with mixing and mastering the bulk of Tataee's work for the group until the late '90s, when Romanian sound engineer Cristian Dobrică started working with B.U.G. Mafia and has mixed and mastered their every album since. Tataee has stated on his Twitter account that he will often guide the mixing sessions and work as assistant mixer on his productions but that Dobrică will make the final calls regarding mixing and mastering. Holograf's Tino Furtună is credited with the mastering of IV: Deasupra tuturor, as the vocal sessions for this album took place in his home studio. A premiere occurred during the post production of JerryCo's debut album, Orice E Posibil (Anything Is Possible), when Tataee personally mixed every song on the album, as credited in the album's liner notes.

Writing

Tataee usually writes his own lyrics and he will even write for artists he is working with. This was the case when working with Bucharest-based club owner Marcel Sârbu who released a number of hip hop singles under the professional name "DMS" to help promote his business, two of which were produced and written by Tataee himself. A demo version of "Pe Față" (Truthfully) was even leaked to the Internet, featuring Tataee doing guide vocals for Sârbu.

He wrote the lyrics for the 2004 Akcent single "Poveste De Viață" (Life Story) and he also wrote Cristina Spătar's 2006 "Fără Egal" single (Like No One Else) and Adriana Rusu's "Noi Doi" (Us). Exceptions occurred during the making of B.U.G. Mafia's 1996 albums Înc-o zi, înc-o poveste and Născut şi crescut în Pantelimon when bandmate Daddy Caddy wrote "Pantelimonu' Petrece" and "Până Când Moartea Ne Va Despărți" by himself for the group as stated by Tataee on his Twitter page. Caddy also wrote the lyrics of the 2008 single "Ridică Mâinile" (Raise Your Hands) by Andreea Antonescu, while Tataee produced the song.

Discography

With B.U.G. Mafia

Studio albums

Extended Plays

Maxi-singles

Compilations

Best-Of Albums