Before he would become arguably one of the most popular members of hip-hop’s newest collective known as “41” -- the rapper TaTa was born Zaire Tasean Rivera on February 17th, 2005 in the Downstate Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. Born to his mother, Joniqua Alvarez and his father, Zaire Rivera, Zaire Jr. was raised in a Puerto Rican and Panamanian family alongside three brothers, Zyon, King, and Prince, as well as one sister, Laila. Together, these four spent the vast majority of their youth growing up on the streets of Brownsville in Brooklyn. As a kid, Zaire’s early life was pretty rudimentary. He used to fill his hours by playing basketball in the park and then picking up a controller and gaming well into the night. He also had a deep-seated passion for music, looking up to a number of hip-hop icons including Drake, A Boogie Wit da Hoodie, and Lil Wayne. His infatuation with these rappers’ skill sets would lead to Zaire trying his hand at writing rap lyrics of his own from a young age -- but he didn’t concentrate on music as much as he might have liked to at first because he also had to focus on his education.