Dorough tells Billboard.com that "A.J.'s about done" with
his album, while Dorough is "probably close to halfway there."
He's been working with Jon Secada and George Noriega (who has
produced records by Ricky Martin, Shakira and Jennifer Lopez)
on an album that Dorough says will explore the Latin roots of
his mother's family, which hails from Puerto Rico.

"I've always embraced the Latin rhythms, the Latin sounds,
just the music itself," says Dorough, who even considered
joining Menudo when he was younger. "It's just such a feel-good
music, and I've always looked up to people like Jon Secada,
Ricky Martin, Enrique (Iglesias), who have done a good
crossover."

Dorough describes his album as "kind of Latin-ish, English,
Spanglish. It's just a mixture of my American roots in pop
music meets my Latin roots. It's gonna be a good, kind of
eclectic mixture."

Release dates for both his and McLean's albums are up in
the air, however. "Obviously Backstreet's always gonna be No.
1," Dorough says. "It's a matter of timing, when we feel each
of us wants our record to come out so that we're not competing
with each other or taking time away that we could be working
... as a group."

The group, in fact, has already started working on its
follow-up to last year's "Unbreakable," recording new material
while on tour in Europe. Dorough says they plan to hit the
studio after their tour of North America, which starts Tuesday
in St. John's, Newfoundland, and wraps September 6 in Seattle.

"We're looking at getting back into the studio quite
quickly," says Dorough. "We want to hopefully have something
ready to go or at least be heavily into it by the end of the
year and have something out towards the beginning of next
year."

Reuters/Billboard