Background
Costi was born on January 14, 1978, in Constanța, Constanța County, Romania.
Costi was born on January 14, 1978, in Constanța, Constanța County, Romania.
Born in Constanţa, he began his musical career by singing Romanian traditional music In 1999 he started to experiment with manele, a composite Balkanic musical style, and in 2000 he collaborated with acclaimed manele singer Adrian Minune on Of, viaţa mea ("Oh, my life"), one of the first mainstream successes of the genre in Romania. Following Valahia"s dissolution in 2002, he started a solo career, concentrating on manele.
In this period he collaborated with several well known manele singers.
His success is considered unusual, as he is one of the few ethnic Romanian in a genre perceived as Gipsy. Also, unlike his Gipsy counterparts, Costi Ioniţă does not use a nickname.
Despite his success in manele, he also experimented with other musical styles, such as rock, dance or opera, avoiding to be identified with manele or to be too closely associated with the Romani culture. Since 2008 Ioniţă acts as producer and songwriter for the popular/rock girl band Blaxy Girls.
In 2009 he reached the finals of the Romanian selection for the Eurovision Song Contest with three songs he composed, one sung by himself, one by Blaxy Girls, and the third by another group, IMBA. In July 2007 he launched a music channel, Party television, and in October that year his company received licence for another two music television channels, one of them, Mynele television, dedicated to promoting manele.
He is also involved together with Bulgarian singer Andrea in the Sahara music band, a group that has released several hits and singles featuring Bob Sinclar and Shaggy and another one featuring Mario Winans. In 2011-2015 he featured with Serbian singers Ana Kokić in her single Idemo na sve, Sandra Afrika in her singles Devojka tvog druga, Bye bye and Devojački san and Viki Miljković in her singles Rumba, Čiki liki lajla and Dosadno (featuring DJ Spaz) and Croatian singers Nikol Bulat in her singles Strašno ti stojim and Hajde opa and Morena in her single Dugme s košulje, respectively. In 2011, he co-wrote the song "Zaleilah" together with Ionescu Elena and Secada Dihigo Omar.
The song represented Romania in 2012 Eurovision Song Contest and was sung by Romanian Latino band Mandinga.
lieutenant finished 12th overall, but was a great commercial success. In 2014, Costi Ioniță had an international hit with the multlingual song in Arabic, English and Spanish titled "Habibi (I Need Your Love)" co-written by him and Australian singer of Lebanese origin Faydee (full name Fady Fatrouny).
The song by Shaggy, Mohombi, Faydee and Costi has charted in Romania and many other radio charts. A Bulgarian version was performed by Bulgarian singer Galena and Faydee and a Russian version by the Uzbek singer Shahzoda with Faydee and Doctor Costi.
He however achieved fame as a member of the popular boy band Valahia, launching several hits. In the late 2000s Costi Ioniţă extended his act in the Balkans and Middle East, achieving success in Turkey and Saudi Arabia with the song Ca la Amsterdam ("Like in Amsterdam"), a tune included in the 2010 compilation issued by Café del March He also launched several hits in Bulgaria, in collaboration with local singers.
