Somewhere between the hot sunny beaches of Miami and the college campuses of UF, neighboring Mickey Mouse and his gang, reside four young guys who are causing a commotion in tropical music. They grew up in Lawrence, Massachusetts with dreams of someday singing and performing on stage. Although they have been friends from a very young age, they didn’t come together as a group until a mutual friend at The Latin School of Music and Art, who was unaware that they already knew each other, suggested they form a group. Composed of Innoel, Eiden, Delvin, and Luis, 4Ever or “Los Boricuas de la Bachata” are certain that it was destiny that brought them together almost two decades after their childhood friendships began, and so they have gleefully titled their upcoming album Destino. Although the young musicians are of Puerto Rican descent and have traveled to their ancestral land a number of times, they’ve yet to perform there. “We’ve gone as a group on vacation, but we’re still waiting for the opportunity because that’s our homeland, our people, and we want to bring our music there…to our family,” says Innoel, front man for the quartet. They have been busy touring throughout the States. The album Destino was released in June of this year. “We recently dropped the single ‘Locutor’ and have received very good feedback. People have been responding to it real well, which is exactly what we wanted, you know. We wanted the audience to make this song theirs. ‘Locutor’ is a song that’s dedicated to DJs. Particularly because we feel they don’t get enough credit. The DJs play a huge role in putting our music out there and having the public listen to it.” Do you write all your own music and lyrics? Most of our songs are written and composed by us. “Locutor” was written by Enrique Ortega, a very good friend of ours. He’s also written songs for Andy Andy, Los Toros Band, Jimena. We feel very privileged to work with him. What do you feel sets you apart from other young bachata groups? The fact that we do 4-part harmony automatically sets us apart and the fact that we do our own choreography and dancing, you know; we don’t have any background dancers. We’re also all Puerto Ricans— “Los Boricuas de la Bachata.” We’re trying to bring bachata to another level and introduce it to the English market. We have a lot of fans que son americanos, and they’ve said things like “Oh, can you translate the song into English so we can understand [the lyrics].” They enjoy the music and the melody, but they just don’t understand it. So, we want to conquer the Latin market, but eventually we want to bring this music to the English market as well and make it worldwide. What artists would you love to work with? Ooh…(pause)…Let us go into our list here (laughs). We definitely would love to work with Juan Luis Guerra because he’s amazing. He’s a great songwriter and he’s a living legend. Also, we’d like to work with Eminem… No, no. Just kidding (sarcastic giggle). No, really, we’d like to work with artists like Marc Anthony [Eiden interrupts to say “and J.Lo”], Juan Gabriel and any other artists that come our way. So, I heard that you enjoy Journey’s music…. Journey is a group that we love, particularly Steve Perry. He’s an opera singer. That guy’s range is crazy. His power is crazy. They had so many hit songs. One song in particular, “Faithfully,” is a song that represents an artist’s career. He depicts it so well and plays a huge influence in what we do, as far as style goes; Queen and Boyz II Men also. It’s funny because everywhere we go, when we travel, we take our Journey’s Greatest Hits with us on the road (laughs). We sing along with it and reminisce and just enjoy the music. Tell me something people wouldn’t know about you. We used to box. Some of us met each other at the boxing gym. We don’t box right now, but we still throw some punches here and there.