Romeo Santos is (n)syncing up with a pop icon…
The 41-year-old Puerto Rican and Dominican-American singer, known as the King of Bachata, is joining voices with Justin Timberlake for the new single “Sin Fin.”
Santos offered a sneak peek at the upcoming collaboration, dropping a 15-second preview of their highly anticipated single via social media on Monday.
The preview of the track from Santos’ Formula, Vol. 3 album, due September 1, spotlights JT’s vocals, as he sings, “You already know this love is all your, baby/ So take it/ We’ve been here before, it’s strong enough to save us, oh baby,” over what appears to be black and white footage from the song’s video. The various set-ups range from JT and Santos laughing and goofing around on set to Santos dancing with a woman and taking a ride in his expensive car.
The song will appear on an album that also boasts a collaboration with Rosalía and which will focus not on reggaetón, trap or rap, but on bachata, the traditional, guitar-based Dominican heartbreak music that Santos has made his calling card.
“If I do an urban song, it could be massive. I don’t want it to be a distraction,” Santos recently told Billboard in a cover story. “You have these amazing artists who right now are in their prime offering urban music. I wanted to make a difference and speak for my genre. Bachata needs me. I needed to put on my Superman cape for my culture.”
Santos, a longtime JT fan, had never met the “Sexy Back” singer and they had few connections before working together. In fact, just feeling out Justin’s interest in recording a song took nearly a year, but Santos was determined to make it happen.
“Ninety-nine percent of my records are written and produced by me,” he said. “But on Aventura’s first album, I took ‘Gone’ by *NSYNC and rewrote and translated it to Spanish,” he added, referring to an all-acoustic cover from his group’s 2002 album, We Broke the Rules. “It’s crazy how things line up. That was history in the making without realizing it.”
Once the song was in the works, however, it came together quickly, with Santos recruiting longtime collaborator Rico Love and producer Danja (who, along with Timbaland, co-produced all of Timberlake’s 2006 album, FutureSexLoveSounds) to come up with “Sin Fin.”
“He said, ‘I dig this.’ What I respect about JT is he not only recorded his vocals but he turned that song that now I feel was at 30% into something completely different for the better,” said Santos. “He changed the melody, the lyrics; he wrote, he produced. There was a moment where I was at the studio and he was directing my guitarist. To me, that was surreal: JT is producing a bachata.”
