encouraging the young Irimia to sing. In 1981, his family relocated to Caransebeș and then to Drobeta Turnu-Severin 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. Music career 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) 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