It’s been less than a week since Aventura shocked fans by releasing their first original music in nearly 10 years, and the hype hasn’t subsided one bit. The collab, titled “Inmortal,” appeared on Santos’ new album Utopia on Friday and has set off the Dominican internet ever since.
Santos stopped by Apple Music’s Beats 1 show to promo the album with radio host Ebro Darden, and broke down the record track-by-track. The king of bachata revealed that he came up with the idea to record a project featuring pioneers of bachata seven years ago, though he only began recording tracks for the project last year.
He also shared an anecdote about the experience of recording the Aventura collaboration for the album. As it turns out, Romeo recorded each part of the track with Henry, Mikey, and Lenny separately – and in secret. He didn’t tell his bandmates the song was going to be a reunion until after it was complete. “I called Lenny and Mikey, the bass player and the guitarist. I brought them to the studio separately – they’re brothers – I didn’t have them record together. And I just told them I’m preparing my next album, did not elaborate, did not say anything about the concept or anything – did not tell them that they were going to do an Aventura song.” Romeo says he was afraid news of the collaboration would somehow leak, so he kept everything under wraps, even with his bandmates. “I just straight up did not say anything. They recorded this Aventura song not realizing what they were doing,” he added.
After he revealed the news to Mikey and Lenny, they were understandably thrilled. “Let’s just say they were very excited and there was some profanity.”
Santos also shared a bunch of anecdotes from some of his major collabs with English-language stars, including Drake, Usher and Future. As he told Ebro, the collaboration with Drake took 10 months to come together. Because Drizzy wanted to sing in Spanish for the collab, Santos met up with Champagne Papi in the studio to guide him.
Listen to a clip of the interview and the full interview below: