Lorely Rodriguez, AKA Empress Of, grew up in Los Angeles but headed across the country to study production and audio engineering at the esteemed Berklee College of Music in Boston. In 2011 she moved to New York, and the following year Rodriguez unveiled _Colorminutes_, a project in which she anonymously uploaded minute-long song fragments to YouTube. The synthy, ethereal pop snippets garnered plenty of attention, and the debut Empress Of 7”, "Champagne," was released shortly thereafter. After connecting with Terrible Records, Rodriguez issued _Systems_, a four-song EP that found the Latinx artist – Rodriguez’s mother is originally from Honduras – singing in both Spanish and English. After signing with the vaunted XL label, the time came to record her debut LP — a friend offered the use of his rural lake house in Mexico, so Rodriguez decamped there for an extended period and came up with the bulk of what would ultimately become _Me_, her first full-length album, released in 2015.
