Aqyila For The Better EP Revisited

Aqyila released her debut EP For The Better on May 19, 2023 through Sony Music Canada. This is a catalogue project, framed as catalogue: nothing here is new, and the record still matters because it is the first full statement from a Toronto singer who had already gone viral, already been Juno nominated, and still had to prove a body of work could hold what a single could start.

The official audio for “Hello,” embedded below, carries the EP’s artwork and its argument at once: the singer among hanging flowers, greeting the future instead of mourning the past. The song became the project’s signature, and its story is below.

Six Songs About Changing For The Better

Apple Music’s editorial on the EP calls it “a six-song serving of self-help R&B that uses personal details to frame relatable narratives,” and the release-era coverage names the six: “Hello,” “We Keep On,” “Moving Like That,” “OH!,” “Vibe for Me (Bob for Me)” and “Pressure.” The Sound Cafe’s release coverage describes the collection as songs “about self-realization and healing,” written between Toronto and Los Angeles, with each track serving “as a letter to self, a testament to the power of affirmation and the realizations that come with embracing one’s own self-worth.” Phinisey, her longtime collaborator, executive produced the project, as Aqyila confirmed in her BeatRoute interview.

The title itself is a lyric lifted from the record. In that same interview she explained where it came from: a line in “Hello” about some things really happening for the better, a line that resonated with her strongly enough to name the whole EP after it. Her summary of the arc is just as direct: “In the whole EP, it goes from heartbreak to finding yourself again.”

The Viral Song, Recorded In A Bedroom

The oldest song here is the one that started everything. “Vibe for Me (Bob for Me)” was her debut single, a viral TikTok record built on a roll call of beauty, its hook name-checking the bob, the hijab and the fro, as Apple Music’s editorial notes. It passed ten million streams and earned her a 2022 Juno nomination for Contemporary R&B Recording of the Year before she had released a second song. Her own account of recording it, given to Deeds Magazine, is the house detail worth keeping: when the snippet went viral she sat down in her room, recorded the full song on her MacBook holding a microphone to her mouth through her brother’s gaming headset, built her own harmonies, and mixed and mastered it on BandLab. The EP’s most polished era begins with a bedroom recording, and the record does not hide it.

Around it, the newer songs widen the palette. The Nuance Magazine’s release-day review hears the neo-soul of “We Keep On” lamenting heartbreak over fuzzy retro synth keys, “Moving Like That” gliding over a glamorous trap-pop beat, and “OH!” layering vocal samples and wobble synths under a lyric about hitting a 7-Eleven for Excedrin to deal with the hangover of love. “Pressure,” produced by Phinisey and co-written with Midian Mathers, works the other register entirely, an island-tinged confidence record that had served as the EP’s lead single.

Hello, The Song The EP Needed

“Hello” was the last song written and the one the project turns on. Aqyila told Deeds the EP was essentially done when she decided it needed one more song, an inspirational track, made with producer Evan Miles: “let’s sit down and make a beat that feels like moving.” Her favourite on the record, though, is “We Keep On,” made almost by accident in a late session and built, in her words, around going through a repetitive cycle with somebody who keeps promising to change and do better.

What “Hello” did next settled the EP’s place. Sony Music Canada’s release record states it plainly: the EP’s hit single “Hello” won the 2024 Juno Award for Traditional R&B/Soul Recording of the Year. A six-song debut, assembled from a bedroom viral, a run of singles and one last-minute inspirational record, had produced a Juno winning song. Her next single, “Bloom,” is broken down in our reading of that lyric.

Released on May 19, 2023, For The Better remains Aqyila’s founding document: six songs moving from heartbreak to self-recovery, a title taken from its own closing argument, and the debut that turned a TikTok breakthrough into a Juno winning career.