Tatarka

Tatarka is a bilingual hip-hop artist from Tatarstan, Russia. She was born as "Irina Aleksandrovna Smelaya" on December 21, 1991, and raised in the city of Naberezhnye Chelny. Before launching her solo career, she appeared on several songs by Little Big, the rave band that featured her future husband, Ilya Prusikin. Her debut single, "Altyn," followed in 2016, accompanied by a viral music video that received more than three million views during its first week of availability. She married Prusikin that same year. Another collaboration with Little Big arrived in the form of 2017's "U Can Take," a non-album single whose lyrics were performed not only in the Turkic language of Tatar, but also in English. Standalone singles like 2017's "Pussy Power" (which Tatarka performed entirely in English) and 2019's "AU" followed. Before 2019 was finished, Tatarka and Prusikin teamed up yet again for "Arriba," a collaborative single featuring Little Big and the British electronic group Clean Bandit. Her separation from Prusikin in 2020 brought her long-running partnership with Little Big to an end, but her career continued to flourish with the release of her debut EP, Golden Flower, which was released that October by Warner Music Russia. The EP featured singles like "Vroom," "Bubblegum," and "KAWAII," with the latter track becoming a viral hit throughout Asian territories like Singapore and Thailand in 2022.