Building off his two nominations at the upcoming Grammy Awards (February 11),
Nate “Danja” Hills is presently working with acts as
diverse as Britney Spears and DJ Khaled.

Danja’s phone has been ringing quite a bit since lending his production skills
to Justin Timberlake‘s Future Sex/Love Sounds. The Virginia
producer is now working with legendary pop group Duran Duran,
former American Idol contestant Katherine McPhee, the aforementioned
Spears as well as Khaled, among several other rap projects.

“I’m getting the same amount of calls on either side, it’s just a scheduling
thing to whoever I can get to,” Danja said in regards to his pop and hip-hop
demand. “I like jumping around from genre to genre. I can kinda turn into
another type of creature and get into another type of zone. I can bring a pop
element to hip-hop, I can take the hip-hop element to pop.”

Though accolades have surfaced from all angles, there still seems to be confusion
regarding Danja’s role in Timberlake’s critically acclaimed album. While some
will say that he produced hits like “SexyBack” and “My Love,”
others are under the impression that Timbaland produced them
solely. Meanwhile, Danja insists that the sounds were collaboratively created
from scratch.

“Me and Tim, we all was in the room together. We all put the same amount
of work into the joint. It was a total collaborative effort,” Danja explained.
“If I only played keyboards, I wouldn’t be on the record as a producer
right beside Tim, right beside Justin. We worked together on everything. Everything
you see our name on together, we took part in it together.” The “collaborative
effort” paid off. Now Danja has received two Grammy nods, one for Best
Album for FutureSex/LoveSounds and one for Best Dance Recording for “SexyBack.”
“At first I was just satisfied being nominated,” Danja offered. “It
really didn’t hit me in the beginning. And now the closer we get to the Grammys,
I’m like, ‘it would be nice to win the Grammy.’ I’m started to feel like we
might win.”