“Can I make it clear?” Lorely Rodriguez asks within the opening moments of her debut album, Me. Her singular voice is the centerpiece of Me, her first fully-formed vision of an album, following her previously shorter and more abstract releases as Empress Of. “Don’t tell me who I am,” she sings seconds later. Me plays out like diary entries from one woman’s voice musing on the personal, the political, and all the middle ground between. “This record is not about Mexico …it’s about me,” she says. “I learned how to let my voice out through this record. I learned how to record, how to produce. I learned how to write way better songs. I didn’t realize this until i was almost done with it, but it was all about growth, and all about kind of being selfish and taking time for myself to really understand what events in my life have shaped me as a person.”