Dami Oniru’s “What We Call It” Captures the Power of Naming the Feeling

What We Call It quietly captures the moment a feeling stops hiding. The production, handled by Rore, is deceptively simple – a minimal alt-R&B and Afrosoul palette that opens enough space for the singers to breathe. But it’s in that space that the song finds its power. Dami’s voice glows at the center, warm and unhurried, tracing the edges of a feeling she’s only just ready to admit. Oladapo meets her tone for tone, his phrasing softer, almost hesitant, like a person stepping carefully into a truth he wants to believe in.

What makes the track linger is how they shape the smallest word into something expansive. “Love” –  stretched, whispered, curved differently each time – becomes less a lyric and more a living thing. You hear the wonder, the fear, the surrender folded into its syllables. Their harmonies slip into each other like a shared breath, capturing that moment when affection stops being subtext and becomes something solid, spoken, undeniable.

There’s no dramatic arc here, no grand confession, no sharp turns. Instead, What We Call It feels like calm weather – a slow clearing of skies. The song turns to the everyday moments that reveal us to ourselves: the glance held half a second too long, the laughter that comes easier than it should, the way our bodies lean closer before our minds catch up. In tracing these small gestures, the track suggests that naming love is less about invention and more about recognition. The feeling has always been there; the courage to language it is what arrives late.

And in a musical landscape where declarations often come loud and overwrought, Dami and Oladapo offer a different kind of intimacy; one shaped by stillness, by soft breath, by the quiet courage of two voices meeting in the middle. It doesn’t rush to define love; it lets it bloom slowly, like warmth returning to the body after a long cold.

What We Call It is a quiet, emotionally precise meditation on the power of naming what matters. In under three minutes, Dami and Oladapo remind us that love often becomes real not when it arrives, but when we find the courage to call it what it is.

Listen to What We Call It here.