Canadian singer-songwriter Chantal Kreviazuk has written songs for superstars like Drake, Pitbull and Kendrick Lamar, but hadn't released an album of her own for seven years.

Then she decided to take some songs back.

"Some of the stuff was taking too long for them to cut," Kreviazuk told CBC P.E.I.'s Mainstreet to promote a performance in Charlottetown next month. "It was just bugging me that it was just sitting there because I loved it so much, and then I re-looked at it as material for myself.

"And then all of a sudden I had a whole album, which was really cool."

Kreviazuk took the material — including some originally meant for U.S. singer Pink — and came up with Hard Sail, her sixth studio album and her first since 2009.

She said working with other artists was great but "then I started to get major creative urges," which resulted in an album she describes as more aggressive than her earlier offerings.

"I think I was somewhat of a different person by the time seven years went by," she said. "It was super, super exciting. And I definitely think that Hard Sail is a lot more bold, because I write with people so much that the writing process has become something I'm slightly less precious about now. I'm not scared to make big decisions, and I don't try to be super safe. The [opening] song Hard Sail is a big departure, even, for me."

Kreviazuk said she's begun to learn that the best art comes when people are true to themselves. "That's our best work," she said.

"I think that's what we're supposed to do. So I just wanted to express all my learning and growing in the past seven years and really get into some topics that matter to me as a woman, as a wife, and it was really fun."

Talking to Interview magazine in June, Kreviazuk said the song Vicious off the new album is in part "about the days when I can't believe there are girls in Iraq being sold to ISIS as sex slaves."

She has long been interested in helping the the world's most vulnerable. Kreviazuk has been an ambassador to War Child Canada for 16 years and is one of the organization's founding artists.

"War Child being in the world means there is something we can do," she said. "So they've given me an opportunity to learn and grow and feel like I'm part of a solution as opposed to part of the problem, and that's been incredible."

Kreviazuk is scheduled to perform at the Confederation Centre of the Arts Nov. 23 at 8 p.m. with Halifax-born cellist Kevin Fox.