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For any Latin music connoisseur, Prince Royce has been a cemented household name since the early 2000s. His love-drenched bachata catalog has earned him an impressive array of accolades, including 25 Billboard Latin Music Awards, 21 Premio Lo Nuestro Awards, and 15 Latin GRAMMY nominations. At age 36, he boasts a career many spend their entire lives emulating.

Now, nearly two decades following his debut, Royce returns with one of the most unique offerings the industry has seen in recent years—a conceptual album with nostalgic pop hits reimagined as infectious bachata renditions. From Backstreet Boys’ “I Want It That Way” to The Temptations’ “My Girl,” Eterno travels through several eras, classic by classic, reconceptualizing them with respect and grace.

Ones To Watch got a chance to sit down with the Dominican superstar the week of his birthday and album release to discuss the process of building out the concept project and his unwavering loyalty to bachata.

OnesToWatch: You just had a birthday. What are you centering this next chapter of life on? 

Prince Royce: I’m just grateful to be here these days. It sounds crazy, but as I got older and started looking back at things I've achieved, I'm like, “Man, I'm pretty blessed.” We often have goals and achieve them, and then we forget that we achieved them. So I think that, these last couple years, probably since COVID, I'm just very grateful. I'm working on becoming a better version of myself. I’m entering the grateful phase. I’m taking things day by day, step by step, just trying to live it up a little more. The world's so crazy these days, you see so many things online. I'm just happy to do music and touch hearts. To do what I love and be creative. I always try to find that drive to keep going. 

You’ve absolutely accomplished so much. You've earned so many accolades. Has that redefined how you measure success now in your career?

Success is different for everyone. We live in a world where there's Instagram and you're constantly comparing yourself to people in every way, shape, or form. I'm just focused on my own path and what I'm doing. I think once you start doing that, things just start feeling better. Like, how can I do something different than I already did? Not that somebody else did. Everyone's success is different, and every story is different. I think that recently, even for myself, with so much online, you start comparing and saying, “This person did this, why didn't I get that?” Once you just remove all that, I think your success starts feeling better.

As someone who has stayed so loyal to the genre, what would you say to the people who haven't really allowed themselves to explore bachata and all these different sub-genres in Latin music? 

I think bachata has always been very niche. I've done all types of genres, I've done R&B and reggaeton. But I always come back to bachata because one, that's the genre that people know me for, and that gave me the opportunity to even do music and be successful, so it's a genre that I hold close to my heart. But also, there aren't that many bachata artists who can represent globally like that. I take, not the pressure, but the responsibility of doing it up for my culture, for where I'm from. I feel like I'm 200%. I'm 100% a New Yorker who likes hip-hop, who likes R&B, who spoke English in school, but I’m 100% a Latino who was very in touch with Dominican culture, Spanish, and the music and the food. I represent that through bachata.

For the people who maybe aren't familiar with it, it's just a rich genre. It's musical. Everything's played by a musician, which especially nowadays has been lost a little. It's lyrically very rich, you can't get away with saying something that doesn't have meaning in the genre. Every song has deep poetry. It’s a genre that requires a lot of effort and work creatively. It has a lot of musical integrity. It often feels like it's difficult. Some of these people are doing, like, a b a b c a b c songs, and we're over here getting complicated with chord chains. But that's the responsibility we have and what we represent. I always try to have that drive to do the best that I can, to put out good music and give people a song that they could have hopefully for a lifetime. 

Usually, our musical landscape is informed by what we were listening to when we were growing up. When you were in the back of your parents' car, what were you listening to that informed the way that you relate to music now?

Definitely Anthony Santos, Juan Luis Guerra, Frank Reyes. Even more so from my grandmother. Going to DR, everyone would say that my grandmother was very street and that she would go out and drink and party, and that she'd play this bachata that was more for men, like hard type of music. That's what I would hear, traditional bachata music that was mostly for men to drink at the bar type of thing. Her mom would always say, ”Why are you listening to this music? This music's not class.” But I would always hear her playing this type of music in the summer in DR, and that's a memory that I take, even more from her than my parents. 

Were the Backstreet Boys part of your catalog at all? People are going crazy over this cover.

You know it's crazy because when I was putting this together, I knew I needed something from the '90s, and I thought about Backstreet Boys. I told my producers like, “Is this song too new? For what I'm trying to do?” And then I Googled it, and it's, like, 20 plus years old. I'm like, “Damn, I feel old now.” It's definitely safe to say it's a classic. I feel like a lot of people are connecting with that one more so because we all grew up hearing it. I think it sounds great in bachata. All these songs that I chose, I wouldn't have touched them if I didn't think that they felt organic and great and cool in bachata. 

I think that the lineup for Eterno is impeccably curated. Nostalgia feels so good right now, especially as times have gotten even more unimaginably crazy. There's something so comforting about basking in the feelings of our childhood. What was the process for selecting the songs you ended up covering? Were there songs that you really wanted to reimagine but ended up scrapping? 

Oh, 100%. I did Michael Jackson's “Human Nature.” I was so excited to do my Michael shit. I was just unsure, I didn’t know if it fit the flow. And it's also the responsibility of not trying to mess up these songs or have people feel like you shouldn't have touched that one. There are so many songs I wanted to do, El Debarge songs, Jodeci songs, Usher songs. Now I'm like, maybe I should do an Eterno R&B version. I kept the songs that I felt could showcase something different and truly fit as bachata. I didn't wanna force something just because I like the song.

You need to do some exclusive bonus singles or something because we all need a bachata “Human Nature.”

I literally said that last week. I was like, “We should start trying to get the rights of the song.” Because, by the way, the rights of these songs took, like, ten months too.

If you could collaborate with any of the artists that you've covered on this project, who would it be?

I'd love to work with Lionel Richie. Of course the Backstreet Boys. I think that's the one that's closest to my era, my upbringing. When I was going in on buying every song on vinyl, I saw that the Backstreet Boys are on tour. They're doing a residency in Vegas, and then they're rereleasing their CD and vinyl this summer, which is a crazy coincidence. I think it’d be cool to collaborate with them, have them do a bachata dance or something.