Prince Royce

Geoffrey Royce Rojas sold phone plans at a Bronx store to pay for his study hours. His father drove a taxi along the avenues of Manhattan, and his mother styled hair for neighborhood clients in a local salon. Nothing in his surroundings hinted at TV gigs or worldwide tours.

At nineteen, he recorded a demo with a bilingual version of Stand by Me, Ben E. King's standard adapted to the rhythm of Dominican bachata. In 2010, the recording landed in the hands of producer Sergio George.

And the gamble paid off perfectly.

His self-titled debut album, Prince Royce, sold thousands of copies by connecting with a generation raised between New York asphalt and Caribbean roots. Tavern music transformed in his hands into a polished pop sound built on clean guitars, and his first single spent fifty-four weeks at No. 1 on the U.S. Tropical chart.

Courtrooms and the small screen

In 2012, his relationship with his first record label ended in court over financial disagreements and royalty rights. Prince Royce broke the deal and signed with Sony Music Latin and RCA, a corporate move worth more than four million dollars that gave him control over his master recordings.

Soon, casting directors at American networks set their sights on his profile. In 2016, Fox signed him to play Saint Peter in The Passion, a live-broadcast musical staged on the streets of New Orleans with a massive technical production.

That same year, he joined the fourth season of the teen series East Los High, which streamed on Hulu. On the sets in Los Angeles, he played Vincent, a competitive choreographer who pushed the actor to master long dance takes and quick-fire lines in English.

The camera didn't intimidate him at all.

The Anglo Misstep and the Return to the Studio Console

Because the ambitions of the English-language market also came with a price. In 2015 he released Double Vision, an album backed by Snoop Dogg, Jennifer Lopez and Pitbull. But the record stumbled in stores and managed only twenty-one thousand copies in its opening week in the United States.

So he went right back to the Spanish-language circuit. In 2017 he released Five, where he shared the spotlight with Shakira on Deja Vu, and in 2020 he presented the conceptual double album Alter Ego, mixing traditional arrangements with programmed R&B drum beats.

In 2024 he completed production on Llamada perdida after nearly four years of work split between studios in Florida and Santo Domingo. The final mastering of the album required twelve consecutive sessions on a Neve analog console to balance the low frequencies of the bass and the sharp crack of the metal güira.