Prince Royce
photo: lunchbox lp · cc by 2.0 ↗Geoffrey Royce Rojas grew up in the Bronx to Dominican parents, singing in elementary-school choirs and writing songs by thirteen before manager Andrés Hidalgo and producer Sergio George heard his demos and signed him to Top Stop Music. His 2010 self-titled debut minted "urban bachata" as a genre unto itself — traditional Dominican bachata guitar recast through American R&B phrasing and pop songcraft — and made him, while barely out of his teens, one of the style's most recognizable ambassadors to English-speaking audiences.
Prince Royce was a teenager singing Aventura's songs to girls at Bronx parties years before he ever recorded his own music; Romeo Santos and company's romantic, R&B-inflected bachata is the direct template Royce built his career on, and he has named Aventura his greatest influence within the genre.
listen forCue up the nylon-string guitar figure and falsetto ad-libs on Aventura's 'Obsesión,' then Royce's 'Corazón Sin Cara' — the same guitar-forward, conversational-melody bachata, just polished down for a slightly more mainstream pop chorus.
Royce has repeatedly named Marc Anthony as one of the artists he grew up listening to — "Usher, Marc Anthony, Jay-Z" — and Anthony's dramatic, high-note salsa-balladeer phrasing surfaces in Royce's most emotionally pitched bachata ballads.
listen forCompare the aching vocal runs on Anthony's 'Valió la Pena' to the bridge of Royce's 'Culpa al Corazón' — both build to the same open-throated, quivering climax that owes more to salsa balladry than to bachata's traditionally understated delivery.
Royce has said he first heard Usher's 'U Remind Me' at thirteen or fourteen and has been a devoted fan ever since, crediting Usher alongside Marc Anthony and Jay-Z as one of the biggest influences on his musical taste growing up; the contemporary R&B vocal stacking and production polish Usher popularized shaped how Royce approaches his English-language and pop-crossover material.
listen forSet Usher's smooth, layered harmonies on 'U Remind Me' against Royce's 'Back It Up' — the airtight R&B vocal stacking and radio-pop sheen on Royce's English-language single come straight from that Usher playbook.