Romeo Santos and Prince Royce: Photos From Billboard Español Cover Shoot

Romeo Santos arrives wearing a face mask and a hoodie. He’s not sick, just determined to avoid being recognized as he enters our New York studios, and immediately heads to his dressing room with his small entourage. Minutes later, Prince Royce walks through the door, just as quickly and discreetly, with a cap under the hood of his sweater covering half his face.

The two have been seen together in the past, but only as friends on social media. Today, the last Wednesday of October, they’re here to announce something completely different: Romeo Santos and Prince Royce, the “king” and “prince” of bachata, respectively, are finally collaborating, not on a single song, but on an entire album.

Their collaboration has been the best-kept secret in Latin music in years. Appropriately titled Better Late Than Never, the 13-song album will arrive Nov. 28 on Sony Music Latin, where only a small group of people knew of its existence.

Close friends and family were also unaware. (Coincidentally, Royce’s brother, who works as a photographer in New York, only learned of the project when he joined the team that shot the cover for this Billboard Español story and saw both artists’ names on the call sheet.) Many of the musicians who played on the album think it’s by one or the other, since both artists deliberately summoned their sidemen separately and were never seen together in the studio.

The result is pure synergy: “There’s no one taking center stage here,” Santos says. “There isn’t a song where he sings more than me or me more than him.”

Read the full Billboard Español cover story here.