Get To Know: DAMEDAME*

Interview conducted and written by Ivié Imafidon-Marcus.

Before DAMEDAME* had an album, they had their dreams with them on the passenger seat. 

Made up of producers, songwriters and artists Barbara Boko and Edith Nelson, DAMEDAME* have spent years moving between the foreground and the background of  music, developing their own sound while helping shape the worlds of some of the industry’s biggest artists. Now, with the release of their debut album, Dreams on the  Passenger Seat, the duo are finally stepping fully into a world that has been theirs all along. 

Their story begins in Birmingham, where the two first crossed paths around 2016 as artists  within the city’s creative scene. They were fans of each other’s music, posting songs on  SoundCloud, before a mutual friend introduced them and they began helping each other  with records. By 2018, Barbara had grown tired of the neo-soul world she had been  exploring and wanted somewhere to experiment with pop, Auto-Tune, and production  without having to answer to a particular genre. The answer was an anonymous alias, a  space where the pair could “create music with, like, no bounds.” 

Even the duo’s name ‘DAMEDAME*’ carries a meeting point between their worlds. Edith, who is Ghanaian, was looking through Ghanaian Adinkra symbols when she came across  ‘Dame Dame.’ When she showed it to Barbara, Barbara recognised another meaning: “lady  lady” in French, a reference to her own French background. The two meanings crossed over, and they “just ran with it.” 

That spirit of exploration still sits at the centre of their music, with DAMEDAME*’s fingerprints often recognisable before their names appear in the credits. Tyla’s “Double Blind” is one example, its stacked vocals and layered harmonies revealing the duo’s touch,  while their production and songwriting credits extend across artists including Wizkid and  Jim Legxacy. When asked what listeners recognise in their work, the duo point towards  vocal production, background vocals, melodic feeling, and sound design. “We don’t feel like we have a sound,” Edith admits, still surprised by how easily listeners can identify their  work. 

That instinct was nurtured in the Midlands. The Birmingham creative scene they entered  was small and close-knit, with the same people appearing at open mics, poetry  performances, and workshops, creating a network where collaboration happened  naturally. For Barbara, simply watching artists perform their own music in Birmingham  was enough to make her realise that becoming an artist was possible, while the lack of  infrastructure meant DAMEDAME* had to learn to create without waiting for perfect  conditions. 

“Not having, sort of, like, an infrastructure here, because there’s not much of an infrastructure  for music, or resources, in fact, like, really meant that we became very dependent on ourselves, and DIY,” Barbara explains how they invested in their own equipment, recorded people in  bedrooms and travelled with their setups. “It’s very, very collaborative,” Edith adds. 

That DIY foundation eventually led them further into the industry, where their own project  was temporarily placed to one side as opportunities to write and produce for other artists  began to arrive. Barbara describes the transition from making music as a hobby to working  professionally as “kind of like university for production and songwriting and becoming, I  guess, an artist.” They had to learn how to finish music, moving away from their habit of  starting “10,000 ideas” and never completing them. 

One of the defining chapters of that period came through their work with Jorja Smith on her second album, ‘Falling or Flying,’ where they were involved across 11 tracks. What  began as friends “just messing around, experimenting” gradually became an album, teaching  them that the difficult parts of creating a body of work are just as important as the exciting  ones, particularly when the vision disappears halfway through. 

“We didn’t know how we were gonna finish certain songs,” Edith recalls. “We just had to trust  that it was just gonna come out of the sky.” Barbara’s response is simple: “And it always did.” That lesson would become important when DAMEDAME* returned to their own project. For  years, the music had been there; the bigger challenge was allowing themselves to be seen.  “The biggest thing for us, really, was being seen,” Edith says. Many of the songs already  existed, including one that was ten years old, but the pair had never intended to be visible. As their team encouraged them to step forward and recognise what their presence could  mean for other Black girls, they had to confront the fears that came with becoming the  faces of their own work. 

“We had to get over a lot of fears,” Barbara says. “There was never really a time when we felt  ready.” The music, she insists, “was there;” the last few years were about learning how to  represent it visually and finding “that artist’s spirit.” 

That history is embedded in ‘Dreams on the Passenger Seat.’ The album title began as the  title of a song Edith made while she was at university, when she worked as a Domino’s  delivery driver and brought her laptop to work, placing it on the seat beside her and  finishing beats between deliveries. Looking back on that period, she realised she had been  carrying her ambitions with her even when she was distracted or unsure whether she was on course. “I’ve got my dreams with me,” Edith explains. “I might be distracted, I might not even be on  course to where I want to be, but they’re always with me.” 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhgQJsJYLjs&list=RDyhgQJsJYLjs&start_radio=1

Barbara heard the title and immediately felt that it belonged to something larger. “I just felt  like if I had a project, I would want it to be named that,” she says, before connecting the  metaphor back to their own journey: “Your dreams are with you, and you are in the driver’s  seat.” The album carries that sense of time most clearly through “Cinnamon,” the first track on the  album, a song Edith wrote in 2016 for a university assignment after returning from Ghana.  The trip had given her a new sense of connection and belonging, which eventually found its way into the song. Barbara joined the record at the last minute, and over the years it went  through around 30 versions, with the production repeatedly changing while the drums and  lyrics remained. “It stood the test of time,” Edith says, which is why the song became the  album’s opening statement. 

“Buried in the Sand” carries another unexpected history. The song began during a session  for another artist that was ultimately cancelled, leaving behind a record DAMEDAME* had  already fallen in love with. Barbara had initially recorded gibberish intended to become  Spanish, but when they returned to the song, she felt it needed another language. “It just  felt like it sounded foreign,” she explains, leading her to sing in French for the first time in  one of her own songs. An abandoned session had inadvertently created space for Barbara  to bring another part of herself into the record. 

By the time “Fire Burnin’ Thru The Rain” arrives, the album’s title begins to feel less like a  metaphor and more like a record of the journey itself. The song began in Paris after a  difficult day of sessions, when everyone else left and DAMEDAME* finally had space to  make their own music. Its meaning emerged later, as they recognised their own history  within it: previous jobs, call centres, airports, care work, and the obstacles that had  accumulated along the way.  “It’s about carrying on, even when things just feel really hard,” Barbara says. “It’s just about  persevering, and I think this whole project has been that.” 

After years of helping other artists tell their stories and build their worlds, DAMEDAME*  now have the freedom to tell their own. Barbara describes the experience as being able to  hear their “worlds,” their “thoughts”, and their “brains” without dilution. “For me, personally, nothing beats it,” she says. 

Edith hopes listeners hear something equally fundamental: how deeply they love music.  “Every single sound,” she says. “Every single note that you hear.” They are, by their own  admission, “really, really music nerds,” obsessed with production, sound design, genre, and  the possibilities created when they collide. 

That love is audible throughout “Dreams on the Passenger Seat,” in the vocals, melodies,  genre shifts, songs that survived a decade of revisions and unexpected moments that  became essential to the final record. DAMEDAME* leave fingerprints everywhere. 

The dreams were always there. Now, DAMEDAME* are asking you to take a seat beside  them.