Amaal Nuux’s sophomore mini-album runs a swift 21 minutes, so she doesn’t waste any time making her intentions known: The first words she sings on opening track “Heaven” are “Take your hand, touch me there/Don't be shy, don't be scared.” But it’s taken the Toronto singer a long time to get to a place where she's comfortable enough to express those kinds of desires. Raised in a traditional Somali Muslim home where pop music was considered taboo, Amaal admits that she initially approached songwriting “from a place where I was censoring myself,” she tells Apple Music. “In my household, music just wasn't a viable career option, and when I chose it, it came with an extreme amount of backlash. And so it pushed me into making music where I was like, ‘Okay, maybe this will get me less backlash.’ I was robbing myself of experiences and I felt so dead inside, and I was really depressed. But music really is my therapy. It allows me to grow.” The metamorphosis that began on her meditative 2019 EP Black Dove achieves full bloom on Milly, which repurposes her old nickname as an avatar for her wild-child self. Channeling both the fierce feminine spirit and the broken-beat futurism of early-2000s R&B, Milly drips with attitude, whether Amaal is wielding her powers of seduction (“Renegade”), dressing down would-be suitors who can’t come up with a decent pickup line (“Special”), or putting gaslighting ex-boyfriends on notice (“Petty Love”). “This project is huge for me,” she enthuses. “It’s pushed me to be fearless and brave, and that’s what Milly symbolizes for me: the beginning of the real me.” Here, Amaal offers her track-by-track guide to the many faces of Milly.
“Heaven”
“A lot of songs these days can be really objectifying, so I wanted to make a song saying that women are divine. It’s a confident song, like when I sing, ‘It’s highly likely you’ll call me wifey.’ I felt like this song was the most beautiful way of honoring the women that I know and honoring myself. It was really empowering.”
“Honey”
“Everyone possesses that special something or je ne sais quoi. And I feel like I was either ashamed of or didn't fully tap into my special qualities. But over the past few years, I've just been thinking about all of the obstacles that I've overcome in my life and admiring the strength that I've been able to pull from them, so I was just feeling extra sexy and extra spicy the day I wrote this. When I say, 'I got that honey/Sweeter than money,' it's like, I'm on such a great track right now in life and I'm doing so good for myself, so if you're going to enter my life and not level up, then get away from me, because I can take care of myself. The reason I sing ‘You know these nails ain't free’ is that I take care of myself. I know that's superficial, but it just sounded cute. I’m just saying: Don't mess up what I have here. If you're going to come, then add to it.”
“Renegade”
“It's so beautiful to see where you were and where you are now, because I swear, when I think back to that day in the studio making this song, I was just like, ‘Wow, am I really going here?’ And now I'm like, ‘What was I thinking?’ There's nothing wrong with it. It's beautiful. It's empowering. It's liberating. It's part of life.”
“Selfish”
“I'm really proud of this record because I did it with Jordon Manswell from Toronto and RAAHiiM—they're both absolutely incredible. When I first started doing music, a lot of my musical partnerships were all formed in LA. But it's just so beautiful to see how Toronto has completely flourished over the past couple years. It felt really good to do this song with people from here that I absolutely love and admire. This is another empowering song about missing out on somebody that's special. I would say it has remnants of something that I experienced in the past, which involved being there for somebody and loving them so much that you put their needs ahead of yours completely at all times, but in the end you realize you're actually getting the short end of the stick—you're not being appreciated or valued and you snap.”
“Too Good”
“This one came out of a situation involving somebody that I really loved, and I saw a future with them and I felt like I did everything to make their life better. I realize that's a problem and it's something I'm working on: I always put the other person ahead of me. It could be a beautiful thing, but when it's at your own expense, it's extremely damaging and detrimental. I just wanted to level him up and do all these amazing things...and he was seeing someone else. And I found out through Facebook. It was one of my first deep, gut-wrenching heartbreaks—I didn't sleep, I didn't eat, I was just absolutely devastated. He came back around for a while, just saying, ‘Let's work on this—I'm so sorry.’ But I was like, ‘No, it's done. You lost your chance with me.’”
“Special”
"I was talking to a couple of girlfriends out in LA, and they were telling me their dating stories and the most basic pickup lines they get—like, 'Oh, you're really cute.' And it's like, 'Do you think that's going to woo a girl and get her on a date? No! Come correct and come better. Make a girl feel special—be unique, put that effort in.' So that was the conversation and energy we went with in the studio. But I wanted it to still be fun. I have to give so much credit to [producers] NickyDavey—I stepped out of the room, and when I came back in, they had added a whole twist at the end that kicked up the song a little bit. I love that.”
“Petty Love”
“You realize you've been in all these relationships and you're maturing, and you realize that all these games that seemed cute were actually toxic, and you think, 'That really would've been a horrible relationship had I stayed in something like that.' So this was one of those songs where it felt like I had to share a bit of my experience that I had with somebody who was a gaslighter, who made me feel like I was not okay. He did everything to point the finger back at me, and I would just get off a call and be like, 'What happened? How did this get switched over to me?' So yeah, it's just petty love, and I don't want that—I want that beautiful, grown-up, adult, healthy communication. Relationships aren't perfect, mistakes are inevitable, and I don't want to be in a relationship where you're being scolded for that. But it's not really about what you do, it's how you make up for it. I feel like that's a mature relationship: accepting somebody for who they are.”