Danja: Hitting the right note

Danja

By Malcolm Venable
The Virginian-Pilot

If you thought Norfolk native Timothy “Timbaland” Mosley was the prince of pop in 2006, you were only half right. Though he had his hand in crafting some of the year’s biggest songs -– Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack” and Nelly Furtado’s “Promiscuous” among them -– Timbaland got some assistance in his near-domination of radio by a lesser-known producer, Nate “Danjahandz” Hills.

Danja, as he’s known, is fast becoming the next American superproducer – the next, in fact, in a crowd from Hampton Roads. The Virginia Beach son is in the running for four Grammys , all for his work on Timberlake’s CD, “FutureSex/LoveSounds.”

Though these are his first nominations and it’s his first trip to the ceremony, Danja’s not spending too much energy on the hysteria that we regular folk might imagine experiencing if we were quadruple-nominated for music’s top honor.

“I’m pretty excited, happy to make it to that point,” Danja said via phone from a studio in London. “I’m still plugging away at the studio, trying to keep it going. I try not to focus on that attention.”

Danja almost suffered from too much attention last year when “SexyBack” became 2006’s Frankensong. Everyone and their mothers, it seemed, was running around saying, “I’m bringing (insert something here) back.” Did he create a monster?

“You just enjoy how you infected people through music,” he said with a chuckle. “I just sat back and watched how everybody was 'bringing something back.’ I’m glad they did. They used that to kick off their swagger. We were just happy to see it.”

Hills has too much to do to be concerned with people’s parodies anyway. He produced six songs on the album for “American Idol” singer Katharine McPhee, and he’s working with Duran Duran on a forthcoming album. Diddy, 50 Cent and Young Jeezy are in line for beats, too. He and Timbaland also are making songs for one of the year’s most anticipated releases: the dance/hip-hop project by Icelandic innovator Bjork.

“Being a musician, I’m never really uncomfortable working in a style of music.” Hills described the Duran Duran work as “just vibing sessions – musicians throwing a lot of stuff into the pot. It’s a lot of freehand playing going on. It’s really easy.”

With Bjork, “It’s real different. There’s no organization – everybody is just banging on whatever comes to mind, whatever sounds cool. It’s like, whatever drum sounds off or ridiculous is the perfect thing for somebody like Bjork because she has a strange way to hear. So it was all good.”

Although it might seem as if Danja sprang from nowhere to become the next big thing, he has been prepping for ubiquity for some time.

His father bought him a keyboard at 6, one he quickly outgrew in favor of others with more technical capabilities. He played in his father’s church, Advocate’s Gift of Life Ministries, as a teenager. He also worked for a spell at a Burger King on Indian River Road in Virginia Beach.

Before he finished Tallwood High School in 1999, he met then-Virginia Beach-based music maker Teddy Riley. (Danja did a song on the last album released by Riley’s group Blackstreet.) In 2001, a chance encounter with Timbaland turned into an opportunity to play some music for him. Two years later Timbaland broughtDanja to Miami to work in his studio there.

“We’re partners,” said Danja. “There’s really no need for us to part. We’re a strong partnership.”

Their collaborative process takes many forms, he said – Danja finishing a track Timbaland started, them working independently or just playing together. They’ve been known to finish whole songs in 15 minutes.

“We don’t pick who does what. It’s whoever comes with the hottest part, the drum beat or the melody. With the success of 2006, it kind of just makes sense to stick together and keep making hits.”

Reach Malcolm Venable at (757) 446-2662 or malcolm.venable@pilotonline.com