walking upstream…
Prince Royce
photo: lunchbox lp · cc by 2.0 ↗Prince Royce
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Geoffrey Royce Rojas grew up in the Bronx's Patterson Houses to Dominican parents, splitting his days between English at school and Spanish at home — "I still cherish those Dominican roots," he told the Village Voice in 2012, "and I still ate the food, still listened to the music." A demo led him to producer Sergio George and a deal with Top Stop Music; his first single, "Corazón Sin Cara," flopped, so the label gambled on a bachata cover of Ben E. King's "Stand by Me" instead. It became a global hit, taking him from half-empty Bronx clubs to a sold-out Radio City Music Hall debut and a performance for President Obama within two years. His self-titled 2010 debut minted "urban bachata" — the guira and nylon-string guitar of the Dominican genre recast through American R&B phrasing — and made him the style's most recognizable young ambassador beyond the Bronx.
the sound in question
2010
Stand By MePrince Royce
walk the tributaries ↓
Aventura2000s · Bachata / Urban bachata / R&B
Royce was fourteen when Romeo Santos brought him onstage at Madison Square Garden, and he still has the photo from that night. "I grew up to that music, and they got me into listening to bachata," he told the Village Voice backstage at his own sold-out Radio City debut, recalling how Santos looked at him afterward and marveled, "all these years it's only been Aventura, Aventura, and then finally another act came out." Aventura's frontman, still the genre's reigning voice, remains the reason Royce sings bachata at all.
listen: upstream & here
1999
La NovelitaAventura
2011
El Amor Que PerdimosPrince Royce
listen forPlay Aventura's 1999 breakout "La Novelita" — the song Royce singled out decades later, saying "I've always been a fan of" it and calling Santos "a walking encyclopedia of bachata" — against Royce's 2011 ballad "El Amor Que Perdimos." Both ride the same conversational nylon-string guitar and mournful guira patter of classic bachata, but where Santos leaves space for his falsetto asides, Royce fills it with swelling strings, pushing the sound toward the pop ballad he'd spend a career refining.
Usher2000s · R&B / Pop
At thirteen, in the Bronx, Royce heard Usher's "U Remind Me" and became what he still calls a lifelong fan — "I've purchased every album, I followed his career," he told Miami New Times in 2011, tracing his taste back through "tropical music styles, Latin music, techno, pop, rock." The devotion never faded: previewing a 2025 album of childhood covers, he admitted he'd cut actual Usher songs from the tracklist, joking he "should do an Eterno R&B version" instead.
listen: upstream & here
2004
ConfessionsUsher
2012
Close to YouPrince Royce
listen forSet Usher's "Confessions" against Royce's "Close to You" — a Village Voice profile drew this line straight from Royce's own fandom, describing "Close to You" as "a bilingual slow jam complete with a string arrangement and boom-bap drum-kit percussion." It's the same contemporary R&B blueprint Usher popularized: hushed verses building to a pleading chorus, just sung half in Spanish over a bachata guira instead of a drum machine.
Antony Santos1990s · Bachata
Ask Royce what shaped his ear before fame, and the answer isn't Aventura's polish — it's his grandmother's older, harder bachata. "Definitely Anthony Santos, Juan Luis Guerra, Frank Reyes," he told Ones to Watch in 2025, "even more so from my grandmother... she'd play this bachata that was more for men, like hard type of music... that's a memory that I take, even more from her than my parents." A decade earlier, the two had already put that lineage on record, cutting "Que Cosas Tiene el Amor" together in 2015.
listen: upstream & here
1991
Voy Pa'llaAntony Santos
2015
Que Cosas Tiene el AmorPrince Royce
listen forPlay Santos's 1991 "Voy Pa'lla," all rough guira scrape and unhurried, guitar-driven phrasing — the "hard," bar-room bachata Royce says he heard as a kid — against 2015's "Que Cosas Tiene el Amor," where the two trade verses on the same track. Royce's voice stays lighter and more legato next to Santos's grainier, more percussive attack, the generational gap audible inside a single recording.