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Bachata singer Prince Royce is a 22-year-old Dominican superstar hailing from New York City. 

Making his transition from the world of bachata to the glam of pop, Prince Royce is now on the road with Enrique Iglesias and Pitbull

GlobalGrind caught up with Prince Royce to talk about his musical influences, the type of girls he likes, and of course, all the daredevil things he loves to do when not making music. 

Check out our exclusive interview below!

GlobalGrind: Your “Stand By Me” video has over 12.5 million YouTube views. How crazy is that?

Prince Royce: The love I’ve gotten is really amazing. I’m really grateful.

A lot of your musical roots are Latin-inspired, like bachata and you have a lot of R&B and also pop flavor. What are some of your musical inspirations?

It’s very, very diverse. I grew up in The Bronx, New York, where it’s a melting pot like they always say. I grew up listening to a lot of Usher at 13 and 14. I have every Usher album that ever existed. So I grew up listening to a lot of Usher, Michael Jackson, Luis Miguel, a lot of pioneers in Latin music. My parents are Dominican so every summer when school was out, we would always travel to the Dominican Republic for two months for vacation. I really took in the Latin flavor, that tropical flavor, that pop/rock techno. I guess that’s where that combination that we’ve created now, it’s Latin and it’s tropical and it’s pop, it’s a little bit of everything I think. 

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If you could collaborate with anybody, your dream collaboration, who would it be?

I think my dream collab would be Usher. I followed his music for so long and to me, he’s really what an artist should be. He has longevity. I think that’s the hardest part with singing – lasting five, seven, ten years. I think that’s something Usher has done, something Enrique Iglesias has done, so I learn from that and try to do that with myself.

You’re one of the younger Latin stars that are coming up in the music game. We have Pitbull, Enrique, and J.Lo, and it’s always amazing to see how they include Latin culture and mix it with pop culture. Have you ever found it hard to balance the two?

A little bit. I’m working on two new albums now, i’m working on my second Latin Bachata album and I’m working on my first English pop album. It might be a little difficult, but I think that once you get the hang of it, it’s not too difficult. If you look at Enrique, he’s doing interviews on all the Anglo-English channels/stations and he’s also doing interviews on the Latin channels and stations. It’s just a matter of finding that right balance. For me it’s really fun right now because I’ve been recording two albums that are totally opposite. It’s like two different artists. I’m singing pop in English with the riffs and the falsettos and the R&B feeling to it. Then I’m doing the Latin album, which is a whole different ball game. I find it very fun for me right now that I’m recording both simultaneously and I’m really excited to put these albums out.

If you were sent to a deserted island and you could only bring three albums, what three albums would you bring?

I would bring a Marc Anthony album, a Luis Miguel album, and probably an Enrique Iglesias album. 

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Tell us something that most people don’t know about you.

One thing I don’t normally talk about is, I love doing adventurous things. Most of my fans know I love video games. I say it in every interview, so they know. But one thing that I like doing is skateboarding, I like jet skiing, skydiving. It’s like a huge roller coaster ride. Like forty seconds of free-falling. That’s some of the stuff I love, daredevil stuff. I like horseback riding.

What’s something you can’t live without?

I think it’d be a hat. I wear a lot of caps. The fedoras, the caps, driver hats, the fitteds, everything. Whenever I get up, I just throw a cap on and it’s all good. 

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Do you have a celebrity crush?

A girl that I thought was always hot is Jessica Alba. Her hair, her eyes, forget about it.

What’s your favorite thing to do besides making music?

I like eating, I like going to restaurants and trying new things.

What’s your favorite food?

I like pasta. I like lasagna, but specifically the lasagna my mom makes. I love my mom’s lasagna.

What’s your favorite color?

My favorite color is green and my birthstone is emerald so that’s where I got it. 

Do you watch sports?

Yeah, I love baseball. I’m a Yankee fan and I’m currently a Miami Heat fan.

You’re repping Miami and you’re repping New York.

I’m repping New York for sure. I live in Miami now, but I’m definitely repping New York all day. 

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What’s been your favorite moment while touring and doing shows across the country?

There’s been a lot of favorite moments. I’m touring with Enrique and Pitbull right now, which is a blast. These guys are so hardworking, so humble, so fun. But to me I think a moment that’s been very memorable in my career has been singing “Stand By Me” with Ben E. King at the Latin Grammys. He was the original singer.

So many other people have covered this song like John Lennon and fifty years later to meet him and sing this song with him on stage was a real blessing. I would have never thought I’d have that opportunity. 

What kind of girls do you like?

I don’t really have a type of girl. I’ve dated so many different types of women. I’m into blonde girls, brunette girls, darker skinned girls, lighter skinned girls. To me, I think it just really depends on the type of girl. Sometimes you meet a girl and there’s something about her you really like. But me, it’s more of a personality thing. I like fun girls that are able to joke around, able to take jokes, have a sense of humor, that don’t mind going out.

Do you have any other projects coming up? Can you tell us the names of those albums?

We don’t have names for them yet, but we dropped a single called “Addicted” which is not really the first single. It’s a preview single and we dropped a behind the scenes video to it as well. You can get it on iTunes and princeroyce.com.

We’re dropping the official first single at the end of the year. But it’s really a ballad, a really romantic song we really wanted to bring out a song that is meaningful, that a guy could dedicate to a girl and a girl could dedicate to a guy because recently it’s been a lot of dance music on the radio – a lot of upbeat stuff. This is a song that reminded me of back in the days Boys II Men. They would do these beautiful ballads and that’s what we wanted to put out as a preview of the album.