Originally from Los Angeles, now residing in Brooklyn, the Honduran-American female artist Empress Of is taking the pop genre to another, spacier level. Empress Of’s debut, full-length album Me released on Terrible Records is glitchy, alluring, and hard-hitting. Lorely Rodriguez’s debut album is appropriately named Me because, not only did she self-produce it, but also many tracks speak to her own self-empowerment. “Need Myself” and “Standard” off the album are namely the most self-empowering tracks on this experimental pop album.
Empress Of has been named as a contemporary of FKA Twigs by many major music publications, such as Hype Machine, Stereogum and more. The technique of warping her features in her video for “Water Water” runs along the same vein as FKA Twigs, who decided to distort her face for the covers of her releases in order to present another perspective and challenge to idealized female beauty.
She certainly sets herself apart from other female pop artists with her devotion to loving herself. Her music was described by NYLON Magazine as an “electric lullabyÛ. At her shows, unlike most artists, she stares at you directly in the eye as you watch her performance.
Her track “Kitty Kat” on the album Me is about being catcalled: something that is especially relevant for women. The muddy and glitchy sounds are entrapping — reflecting the threatening and suffocating feeling of being catcalled and harassed in the street. The song is hard-hitting and direct to her point that these acts of harassment are only directed at women in order to make them feel vulnerable: she sings, “If I was a man, would you still do the same?” Despite its content, the song is incredibly dancy, as are all her songs of her inward-looking pop album.
Lorely Rodriguez’ music video for “How Do You Do It” from her album Me details the behind-the-scenes parts of her first headlining tour. The video is directed as if it were a home movie: the raw filming of the video adheres to Rodriguez’ theme of vulnerability and honesty.
What does it mean to be in a relationship? What does it mean to fall in love with yourself? These are questions that Rodriguez deals with in Me. Despite the album being self-released, its sound is extremely clean and sophisticated.
Her video for the track “Standard” off the album is extremely nuanced and interesting. We are presented with Rodriguez held upside-down for the start and the majority of the video, implying that the video itself upturns social conventions or what the viewer deems as “normal” and “acceptedÛ. Rodriguez interacts with a body-builder sized man, but despite his hyper-masculine appearance, he interacts with her by brushing her hair, and Rodriguez paints his nails. The video seems to deal with the suffocating nature of gender and sexuality constructs. Perhaps when Lorely sings, “What do you see in the mirror when you’re feeling faceless/Do you see the man that isn’t there,” she is referring to when one feels out of touch with their gender and sex that society has prescribed for them.
Nearer to the end of the video, Lorely places her hand on the shoulder of the man: providing not only support and empathy, but a sense of pity as well. Despite the stereotype that women are the “weaker sex” in patriarchal society, Empress Of presents herself as more in touch with her own identity and stronger than the hyper-masculine male, furthermore underlining the power of female self-love.