It’s hard to tell if Jamila Woods’ solo debut HEAVN could have (or would have) been made without the renewed scrutiny of America’s deeply entrenched racism that has crystallized in the aftermath of the August 2014 killing of Mike Brown by Ferguson police officer Darren Wilson. As part of M&O—a duo formed with fellow Chicagoan Owen Hill—Woods released two full-length projects before the phrase “black lives matter” became a national argument, a hash tag, or a movement. The group’s pair of self-released albums—The Joy (2012) and Almost Us (2014)—were softly adventurous mixes of acoustic soul, alternative pop, and folksy hip-hop that gamboled around the subjects of love, art, the art of love, and the love of art. A sample hook, from Chance the Rapper went: “Love won’t you fall asleep in my arms/While I read you these poems/That I wrote you so long ago.”

M&O showcased many things: smart production, masterful arrangements, a willingness to follow melody and tune above and beyond genre or format. The music was all soft and tender, songs of unity with no anger; the type of songs that would feel like escapism at a time when the rhetoric churned from the mini-complexes of presidential candidates, pop stars, and social media micro celebrities alike was ever-sharpening and often unforgiving. But Woods—who in addition to being a vocalist serves as Associate Artistic Director of the non-profit youth organization Young Chicago Authors—has emerged as a proponent of social justice; the kind of voice that doesn’t stay silent or shy away from the troubles of the world. And, on HEAVN she delves deep into the calamity of now and emerges with songs of freedom and meaning.

As with her previous work, Woods utilizes what’s functional—clapping games, lullabies, Paula Cole, headlines, statistics—to make music that defies categorization but not meaning. The result is unmistakable: HEAVN is protest music that sounds like a children’s playground. Every song here is resilient and steadfast without being angry and militant; almost each tune is a jingle. Produced largely by a coterie of ascendant Chicago stars—Peter Cottontale, oddCouple, Kweku Collins, Saba, and more—the tracks come off as if they’ve been cooked at a high temperature until all of the indignation has evaporated, leaving behind only hope and a rising strong vulnerability.

On “Blk Girl Soldier,” Woods champions freedom fighters, feminists, and writers as being “déjà vu of Tubman,” noting that even a young black girl “scares the government.” There are piercing claims and lamentations—“We go missing by the hundreds;” “They want us in kitchen/Kill our sons with lynchings/We get loud about it/Oh, now we’re the bitches;” “Look at what they did to my sister/Last century, last week/They make her hate her own skin, treat her like a sin”—all presented without rancor or rage. The most defiant thing about the song is Woods’ defiance of the baser emotions during such audacious level-headed truth-speaking. The theme is one of defense in the face of oppression, not vengeance. It’s a “Black Lives Matter (Too)” treatise, not an “(Only) Black Lives Matter” one.

The messages are made easier by Wood’s phrasing and voice—she’s light on the heavy points, her vocals sweet even when delivering bitter truths. She presents herself as an introvert who’d wistfully “rather spend my days alone on my pillow” as opposed to someone railing against the injustice of the world. On “LSD” she’s dedicated to her hometown in the face of inequity and coldness: “I will never leave you,” she sings. “I’m everything you made me/Even when you break me down.” Chance the Rapper’s characteristically dense verse—with shots at Spike Lee, observations of violence, and notes of gentrification— accounted for, it’s all of the sentiments of Kanye West’s “Homecoming,” but with less bombast and self-mythology.

Even when she’s singing about the personal and seemingly romantic, Wood’s experience still seems to presented through the filter of her place in larger society. On “Lonely Lonely” she may be talking to a potential lover when she sings, “Don’t take from me my quiet/Don’t take from me my tears/Don’t take from me me trials/Don’t take from me my fears”—but she embodies her full self as a woman in a world that wants its women to remain silent and its Blacks complacent as to never address the realities of patriarchy and white supremacy. On the title track, she’s ready to for undying love, but links it her ancestors lost to the Middle Passage: “They’re dancing in the deepest ocean/See? Not even death could stop them.”

Filled with personal memories, affirmations of self, and gazes of society’s racial strife, HEAVN is a singular mix of clear-eyed optimism and Black girl magic. On the opener, “Bubbles,” Woods sings of shyness, hesitation, and self-care, noting “how many different oils we know/to turn our skins from brown to gold”—making it metaphor about both beauty and protection. This rumination on isolation, journey, and transformation—which pops up throughout the album—comes full circle on the closer, “Way Up” where she sings, “I’m an alien from inner space” as a declaration that simultaneously reads as individual and universal. “Just ’cause I’m born here/Don't mean I’m from here,” she asserts because she knows that HEAVN is about a climate in which she doesn’t belong. It’s a climate in which none of us belong, but it’s also the only one that could produce an album filled with this particular tenor of hope in the face of despair.