Paulo Roberto da Costa was born on May 31, 1948, in Irajá, a neighborhood in the north zone of Rio de Janeiro, and began on the pandeiro as a child. He paraded with the youth wing of the Portela samba school's bateria, its percussion section, and as a teenager traveled with samba trios and quartets, Brazilian ensembles and Carnaval orchestras, including a troupe led by Jorge Goulart and Nora Ney that played festivals abroad. In 1970 he toured Europe and the Middle East with a Brazilian ensemble that included Waldir Maia and Alcione, and in 1972 he took part in the Festival Internacional da Canção at Rio's Maracanãzinho, performing "Fio Maravilha" with Maria Alcina. Hearing jazz and Cuban music in those years pushed him to widen the range of instruments he played.

In 1972 he moved to Los Angeles, and from 1973 he played in Sérgio Mendes's group Brasil '77. Discogs credits him with bongos, congas and percussion on Love Music (Bell, 1973), and AllMusic gives his Brasil '77 stay as four years. His first Los Angeles album outside the band was with the Miracles, and he played on their chart-topping "Love Machine." Dizzy Gillespie introduced him to the producer Norman Granz, who signed him to Pablo Records, and the association with Granz helped him obtain permanent residency in the United States.

At Pablo he became a regular percussionist on jazz dates. He is credited on Gillespie's Bahiana (1976), Dizzy's Party (recorded 1976) and Free Ride (1977, with Lalo Schifrin composing, arranging and producing), on Milt Jackson's Feelings (1976) and on two tracks of Jackson's Big Mouth (1981). AllMusic adds Joe Pass and Freddie Hubbard to the list, and Discogs credits him on Hubbard's Bundle of Joy (1977) and Skagly (1980) and on Pass's solo date Whitestone (1985). On Ella Abraça Jobim (Pablo, 1981), Ella Fitzgerald's all-bossa-nova album of Antonio Carlos Jobim songs, he played percussion and is credited as associate producer.

His own records began on the same label. Agora (Pablo, 1977) was made with the drummer Claudio Slon and brought in Lee Ritenour on guitar, Greg Phillinganes on piano and the trombonist Frank Rosolino. He then shared the billing on Tudo Bem! (Pablo, 1978) with Joe Pass, a Brazilian songbook session of Jobim, Luiz Bonfá and Marcos Valle tunes with Oscar Castro-Neves, Don Grusin and Slon. He produced Happy People (Pablo Today, 1979), a vocal and horn-section record built on Los Angeles studio players including Larry Carlton, with Philip Bailey of Earth, Wind & Fire singing lead on the opener, and later Sunrise (Pablo Today, 1984), with George Duke, Carlton, Nathan East and Abraham Laboriel. A self-titled album appeared on Globo in Brazil in 1984. Breakdown (A&M, 1991) was produced with Erich Bulling and features Marcus Miller, Herb Alpert, Gerald Albright and Paul Jackson Jr.. He also led his own band at the Montreux Jazz Festival in 1977.

The larger part of his career has been in pop, soul and film studios, and it is a very large part. By the end of the 1970s he was one of the most in-demand session percussionists in Los Angeles, and Wikipedia counts more than 900 artists across thousands of albums. Quincy Jones used him on The Wiz, The Dude, The Color Purple, Back on the Block and other projects, and on George Benson's Give Me the Night (1980) Discogs places him on eight of the ten tracks. For Michael Jackson he played on Off the Wall (1979, six tracks on the Discogs release page), Thriller (1982), Bad, Dangerous, HIStory and Invincible. Other credits include Earth, Wind & Fire from All 'N All onward, the Pointer Sisters, Madonna's True Blue, "We Are the World," Dirty Dancing and, in a later jazz chapter, Diana Krall's live recordings from Paris and Rio de Janeiro. He also appears on Japanese records, among them Hiroshi Fukumura's Hunt Up Wind with Sadao Watanabe.

Recognition has come in volume and late. The National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences gave him its Most Valuable Player award three years running and a Musicians Emeritus award, and DownBeat has called him one of the most talented percussionists of our time. A documentary about him, The Groove Under the Groove, premiered on Netflix in March 2026. On May 13, 2026, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, the first Brazilian-born person to be honored with one. He turned 78 on May 31, 2026, and has lived in the United States since the early 1970s.

Da Costa's training is Brazilian, pandeiro first and then the full samba-school toolkit, with congas, bongos and timbales added through jazz and Cuban music and a collection that AllMusic puts at more than 200 instruments. His own credits on Agora run from pandeiro, cuica, reco-reco and berimbau to waterphone, bell tree, spoons and a frying pan. What he is known for is selection rather than display: AllMusic calls him an endlessly adaptable percussionist with a knack for placing precisely the right isolated beat, which suits a career spent adding color to other people's records.

Jazz is the smaller share of that output. His jazz identity rests on the Pablo years, on his own Brazilian-flavored albums for Granz and on sideman dates with Gillespie, Jackson, Fitzgerald and Pass, while the work that made him famous inside the industry is pop, R&B, disco and film music made in Los Angeles. The two halves share a method, a rhythm-section sensibility carried from samba school to jazz date to hit single, which is why he sits where crossover jazz meets studio pop.