The song admits to craving someone and admits to wanting power over them, and treats both as equally natural feelings. That tension is the whole song. "what u want" is not a love song that stumbles into possessiveness; it goes there deliberately, eyes open, and never apologizes for what it finds.
The narrator wants the person. The narrator also wants to keep them. Those are different things, and nomi. knows it, and says so anyway.
The shadow and the leash
The first image is the one that sets everything: "I craved the feeling of you in my shadow." Not your presence, not your touch. Your shadow. The narrator wants to feel someone trailing behind them, close enough to be absorbed into their outline.
"I like having you for my own / I like you just following me"
There is warmth here, and there is also a leash. The narrator is not ashamed of either. "For my own" is possessive language dressed up as tenderness, and the song lets it stand without irony. Then comes the pivot: "I wanna hold your hand cause I long for emotion." That line softens everything. The craving for control and the craving for connection are both real, and nomi. refuses to make one more sympathetic than the other. The complicated thoughts mentioned in verse one are not confusion; they are the narrator watching themselves clearly and continuing anyway.
The chorus redraws the power map
The chorus is where the dynamic gets explicit and also stranger. "I don't wanna give it up / so it's really not up to you" is one of the more honest things a song has said about desire in a while. The narrator frames giving in as a generous act, an offer to satisfy the other person's wants, while making clear - in plain terms - that nothing has actually been surrendered.
"Tell me what you want / I'll make it up to you" sounds like accommodation. But the structure underneath is: you tell me, I decide how to respond. The narrator collects the other person's desire and manages it. That is still a form of keeping them close on their own terms.
The slight lyric change in the second chorus, "I'll be so good to you" instead of "I'll make it up to you," tightens this even further. Making it up implies some debt. Being so good is pure performance of control, generosity as power.
Verse 2: calling it what it is
The second verse is shorter and more exposed.
"it's so dishonest to deny the way we've both been feeling"
The line I keep coming back to is that word "dishonest." The narrator does not say it would be sad to deny these feelings, or painful. Dishonest. Morally wrong. Denying the attraction is reframed as an ethical failure, which is a clever move: it makes acting on the feeling the righteous choice. "We've both been feeling" also does something important. It pulls the other person in, makes the desire mutual and therefore inevitable. The narrator has been watching, waiting, and they have decided they are owed this.
The pre-chorus builds on a lifetime of searching and arriving somewhere real. Whether the other person fully agrees is left open. That ambiguity is probably intentional, and a fair reading exists where this is simply two people finally being honest with each other. The song holds both versions.
"Strange" and the outro
The outro is one word: "Strange." It closes the song the way the first verse opened it, with the narrator pausing on their own feeling as something worth examining. Two sentences, and that is enough: the narrator gets the last word, and the last word is reflection, not resolution. The loop does not close so much as it folds back into itself.
What the song ultimately holds
"what u want" makes possessiveness legible without excusing it and without punishing it. The narrator sees exactly what they are doing, names it in plain language, and keeps going. The song's argument is that desire and ownership are not opposites; they share a root, and pretending otherwise is the dishonesty the second verse refuses. The outro's "strange" is the narrator sitting with that knowledge. Not guilty. Not proud. Just clear-eyed about what wanting someone can look like up close.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "what u want" by nomi. about?
"what u want" is about desire that slides into possession. The narrator wants someone close and also wants to keep them, and the song is honest about both impulses without treating one as more acceptable than the other. The chorus frames giving the other person what they want as a choice the narrator controls, not a concession.
What does "I like having you for my own / I like you just following me" mean in "what u want"?
These lines are the narrator admitting that the attraction is tied to a sense of ownership. "For my own" is possessive language, and "just following me" pictures the other person in a trailing, subordinate position. The song does not frame this as a flaw to overcome; the narrator states it plainly as part of what they want.
What does "it's so dishonest to deny the way we've both been feeling" mean?
The narrator reframes acting on the attraction as the morally correct choice. By calling denial "dishonest," they argue that pursuing the connection is a matter of integrity, not just want. "We've both been feeling" also brings the other person into the logic, making the desire mutual and therefore harder to refuse.
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