Music has always been like healing for Juno candidate Amaal. Still, the Somali-Canadian R&B singer believes there was part of herself that she hadn’t felt fully comfortable expressing until now.

“I began to understand that I was simply kind of speaking about the same thing [in my music] … and producing from a position of shame and fear, because I am a Somali woman and … it’s a little forbidden to be performing music,” she adds. “So I nearly placed myself in a box. I did it to myself, you know, and I just remember thinking I was doing a disservice to myself and my music. There were things I was going through my life … and I was not talking about them.”

That changed when she penned “Heaven.” It’s the latest song from her upcoming EP Milly, a term based on a previous moniker she’d use outside of her strict Muslim neighborhood.