By most conventional metrics, Romeo Santos and Prince Royce, the two biggest stars of Dominican bachata music, are global superstars.
Since his time fronting the wildly successful and musically radical boy band Aventura in the 2000s, Santos, 44, has been the genre’s alpha, a radiant star and also a stylistic path breaker responsible for bringing the folk genre into the present. He’s sold out Yankee Stadium and MetLife Stadium, collaborated with Drake and Usher and topped the Billboard Latin album chart five times. Royce, eight years younger, topped the Latin album chart five times while pushing bachata even more widely thanks to a penchant for unconventional musical experimentation and collaborations with stars like Shakira and Marc Anthony.
But despite their collective success, as Spanish-language music has become dominant global pop thanks to genre-stomping stars like Bad Bunny — who will headline the Super Bowl LX halftime show in February — bachata has often felt left in the shadows, while reggaeton, Latin trap and corridos tumbados exploded.
In November, the two singers — who had never before released music together — put out “Better Late Than Never,” a joint album. Next year, they’ll tour together, a statement of unity and also an extension of Santos’s ongoing work uniting the stars of bachata from multiple generations.
On Popcast, Santos and Royce discussed their long-running mutual admiration, what it has meant to update a traditional and beloved style for the modern era and the ways in which bachata still hasn’t been embraced despite its global success.
The interview can be watched in full here or listened to below. These are edited excerpts from the conversation.
JON CARAMANICA I feel like I can’t overstate how big the idea of a shared album between you guys is — the “Watch the Throne” of bachata. Did you think of it in those terms?
ROMEO SANTOS Honestly, we didn’t think of the concept of the album. We were just creating what felt like the best songs at the moment. I think we were both passionate about how could we balance his essence, my essence and also challenge ourselves with certain colors, musically speaking, that neither one of us have ever experimented with.
For me, it’s a continuation of the album I released in 2019, “Utopia.” I had the opportunity to collaborate with the pioneers of this genre.
PRINCE ROYCE For me, it was like we were doing this for bachata, for the culture, for the genre, versus “I’m doing this for me or my next album.” It wasn’t just another project. It was much bigger than that. This is like holding the flag up for D.R. or bachata.
The goal was really to have a little bit of traditional bachata, a little bit of pop, a little bit of urban bachata, a little bit of fusion.
CARAMANICA When we talk about great pop music across any genre, we often say that true rule breakers really understand the rules.
SANTOS There’s a record in this album called “Lokita Por Mí.” We’re recording in Royce’s studio, at home, using a little bootleg mic, and he tells me, “Look, let’s just lay down reference vocals — I’m under the weather.” You could hear like this raspiness. I kid you not, I refused to allow him to rerecord it. You’re not gonna be able to do that like you did it that way, this raspiness that just gave it like this unique essence that sounds beautiful. It’s getting a lot of love on streaming. It’s probably one of the favorites, if not the favorite.
JOE COSCARELLI Royce, what was it like growing up in the Bronx in the shadow of Aventura and everything Romeo created and then coming up in that world of bachata that he had made his own?
ROYCE Growing up in New York City, we always knew the O.G. guys — Anthony Santos, Raulin Rodriguez, Frank Reyes. Aventura brought this youthful touch. I was maybe 15, 16, singing the songs to the girls in school. That really brought in this genre from the Dominican Republic that was something that was perhaps frowned upon — algo de barrio — and brought it not only to the masses but to the kids. Bachata was a genre that my parents were listening to that I would hear in the summertimes, and I loved the genre, but it was not something that I would maybe identify with as much until the Aventura guys and Romeo came through.
People don’t realize the amount of lyrics and melody on top of a very musical genre with guitars and bass — it’s a very rich genre because of that. I think they brought that over, giving it a New York swag and that flavor. I would listen to Usher and Eminem and so many other artists, but Aventura was definitely a key group that inspired me to do music, especially because they were from where I was from.
COSCARELLI Romeo, when did you first notice Royce?
SANTOS In 2003, 2004, mi compadre, his cousin, that baptized my oldest son, he said, hey, let’s go to my family’s house just to meet a few family members.
ROYCE Mind you, I have like a hundred family members.
SANTOS So I meet this gentleman, and years later, that photo has gone viral. I want to take this moment to tell people that’s not A.I. Maybe seven or eight years later, this kid named Prince Royce starts popping. Aventura had just had a breakup and this guy was pretty much the face of bachata for a few years, which made my job as a solo artist much easier.
CARAMANICA Royce, I was very struck by your breakout single, a cover of “Stand by Me” partially in English. After a decade of Aventura’s success, bachata was at this pivotal moment where there’s a tremendous amount of awareness, but it hadn’t had the full crossover moment. Was part of the thinking, I want to help carry this sound out to people who have never heard it?
ROYCE One hundred percent not. I actually didn’t want “Stand by Me” to come out. We had put out “Corazón Sin Cara” first and it didn’t work. “Stand by Me” was actually Sergio George, who was a producer at the label — he would do covers with DLG [Dark Latin Groove] and salsa bands at the time. He was like, “Covers work.”
I chose Usher, “U Remind Me,” “Yesterday” by the Beatles and “Stand by Me.” It was just a cover to me. It was a compromise. Then the song’s playing on the radio, and I’m happy, but I’m a little bummed out because I’m like, bro, all these songs that I wrote — original music — and that’s the song that opened up the doors. I think it’s just a weird thing, because I came into Latin music with an English song with a bachata beat.
CARAMANICA Romeo, for a long time up to the dawn of the 2010s, the shape of bachata was whatever you and your bandmates woke up and decided it could be.
SANTOS I pride myself and yo me he autoproclamado the King of Bachata. So that’s a huge responsibility because when you talk that [expletive], you gotta own it. I’m OK with the pressure.
ROYCE My challenge was, what do I do that was different than Aventura? I start adding violins to tracks, you know, ukulele, and then I get criticized as well for that. I didn’t want to repeat what they had already done.
Bachata’s a very niche genre. It’s a very Dominicanized and very culturally sensitive because of that. What do you mean bachata with no guitars? What do you mean with violins?
CARAMANICA It’s even funny to call it niche because you’re selling out Madison Square Garden, selling out Yankee Stadium. Niche is a relative concept.
COSCARELLI There’s always this specter of the idea of “Latin crossover.” Romeo, you lived through what happened with Ricky Martin and Marc Anthony in the late ’90s and early 2000s, these booms that would then recede. And you helped set the blueprint for a new version of crossing over, where English-language artists come into your world. Was that a little bit of a territory grab back?
SANTOS If I’m being honest, it was a huge challenge. Today, at 44, I’m a bit more mature and understand why the label and former managers were like, this is a bit risky. Do you wanna maybe do an English version of the Drake record? Do you wanna maybe do a version of “Obsesión,” only English? I always felt comfortable with the possibility of failing as long as I was being truthful to my craft.
And honestly, it’s more challenging to sell that narrative when you have amazing Latin artists like Ricky Martin, Gloria Estefan, Marc Anthony, Shakira, Enrique Iglesias, Julio Iglesias, just to name a few. And I’m over here trying to do something completely different — what we call the crossover, but for them to cross over into my Latin world. There was a lot of resistance.
COSCARELLI Then there’s this watershed moment in 2017 with “Despacito” and Justin Bieber singing in Spanish on the remix, and you were on record at the time saying it would be a forever change. Almost a decade out, was that for real?
SANTOS When I see the success of “Despacito” and songs like “I Like It,” Cardi B and Bad Bunny, I’m like, oh [expletive], I was right — I was on the right path. I’ve always felt that our culture, our language, our music genres, tropical music is beautiful. And you should embrace that.
COSCARELLI Did you feel vindicated?
SANTOS I’m gonna be extremely honest. I’m maybe at 70 percent satisfaction. The other 30 percent is that, believe it or not, I still have a lot of hurdles. I still think bachata is underrated.
I’m a New Yorker. This dude is a New Yorker. Why haven’t we been invited just to perform on “Saturday Night Live”? I did sell out two Yankee Stadiums. I did do five sold-out M.S.G.s with Aventura. I did MetLife with 80,000-plus. These are the type of things that when I speak to my publicists and my label and my team, I’m like, hey, could we at least get that platform?
COSCARELLI You’ve had your share of pop culture moments — Drake rapping, “Spanish girls love me like I’m Aventura” among them — but why has bachata not had its moment in the same way as Latin trap or even Mexican regional music with corridos tumbados?
SANTOS I wish I could answer that. It’s quite frustrating if I’m being completely honest. When I see Bad Bunny on “S.N.L.” and at the Super Bowl, I go, that [expletive] deserves everything and more. Because he took maybe what every Latin artist wanted to do — a crossover — and he took that to a different dimension, being authentic. I feel proud of his success as a Latino.
But again, if I’m being honest, I have seen other acts — I’m not gonna get into names — on certain platforms that I’ve never been able to and I’m like, OK …
ROYCE You’re like, wait, but why?
SANTOS Am I doing something wrong? Because my mission is always the same mission: Taking this genre, bachata, that comes from el campo, de las humildes provincias de República Dominicana — this is bigger than Royce and Romeo.
Where’s Anthony Santos’s Grammy? Where’s Luis Vargas’s Grammy? Where’s Raulin’s Grammy? To me, Teodoro [Reyes] would be equivalent, as far as the craft, to a Ray Charles. Anthony Santos is probably my Bob Marley. If you would maybe nominate these guys or maybe have invited them to some of these major platforms, I could not be here talking [expletive]. But they give me the leverage.
I don’t wanna play victim, but we get [expletive] on with the genre. And all I’m asking is just educate yourself on what bachata is.
Jon Caramanica is a pop music critic who hosts “Popcast,” The Times’s music podcast.
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