Empress Of

Born in L.A. into a family of immigrants from Honduras, Lorely Rodriguez, AKA Empress Of, grew up on the music of Latin America, Mexico, El Salvador, and her family’s country; music driven by rhythm, music to dance to, drums and bass.

Obsessed with music, Lorely spent her childhood living between Pasadena and San Fernando Valley, attending a 10,000 person high school and multiple others before eventually being admitted to LACHSA, the LA county arts high school. She says it “saved her.” She became a competitive jazz singer, and after high school received a full-ride scholarship to an East Coast music school, but quickly rejected the formality of it all. “My first semester of college, I got a laptop and was like, these jazz classes are such bullshit,” Lorely says. “I started making beats in Reason and just wanted to make electronic music and write songs.”

A 7-inch would soon be released for her first proper 3-minute Empress Of Single, “Don’t Tell Me”. Soon after her first EP was released by Terrible Records. The industry immediately wanted to team her up with a producer, but Lorely felt like the whole process was drowning her voice out: “It just ended up sounding like that person’s music. I thought, ‘this is my first record, I need it to sound like it’s coming from me.’ At that point I decided, I’m doing this myself.”

Her debut album Me was released in 2015 through Terrible Records, followed by a one-off single, “Woman Is a Word,” and a guest appearance on Blood Orange’s song “Best to You”.

A sophomore LP,  Us came out on October 19th 2018 on Terrible Records, and acted as a breakthrough moment, propelled by  lead single ‘When I’ mWith Him’  – which went on to be covered by Perfume Genius.

 

PRESS FOR EMPRESS OF

‘Its hook is a masterclass in pop songwriting, masking a dark undercurrent and impressively creative impulses’ – Rolling Stone

‘Quite simply the best track yet from Empress Of, AKA LA singer-songwriter-producer Lorely Rodriguez – the central melody is riveting: feathery and near-falsetto, it drops into a heartwrenching final line as as Rodriguez laments her disconnection from the man she’s with…a song that already feels classic.’ – The Guardian