You're listening to Song Exploder,
where musicians take apart their songs and piece by piece tell the story of how they were made.
I'm Rishikesh Hirway.
Laura Lee Rodriguez is a singer, songwriter, and producer who goes by the name Empress Of.
She's released two albums, and she's sung on tracks with Khalid, Blood Orange, and Dirty Projectors.
Her first album, Me, was made on her own,
but her second album, Us, features a bunch of collaborators.
In this episode, Lorelei breaks down the Empress of song, When I'm With Him.
She co-produced it with Jimmy Stack and Dan Nigro.
And I spoke to Jimmy Stack about the making of this song too.
Lorelei explained how collaborating opened up her process.
Plus, the song's lyrics are in English and Spanish.
And Lorelei describes how she relies on both languages to write.
My name is Laura Lee.
I'm also known as Empress Of.
When I made my first record, I was in New York and it was produced by me,
written by me, very isolated process.
And then I moved to LA and I started to collaborate more when I moved here.
At least that was my objective
because the beauty of collaboration is you do things that you don't normally do when you're by yourself.