True Studio Stories: Danja Recalls Recordings With Justin Timberlake, Diddy, Rick Ross, Usher & More

Recently VIBE did an article on Danja where he talks about the life and stories of a producer inside the studio with major label artists, check out this article as it is a great insight into what really happened on the tracks given in this article. One of the standout stories for me would be Rick Ross's No 1 and you will see why! Enjoy.

Here are the quotes from the article:

Danja is one of those sonic beasts you often hear, but seldom see. Though the 29-year-old super producer may not be as visual a talent as some of his peers, his usual batch of feverish electro-zapped soundscapes are no less than awesome. From his work as Timbaland's one man right hand band on Justin Timberlake's outstanding sophomore effort Future Sex/Love Sounds to Diddy's brightest beats and Nelly Furtado's indestructible comeback single, Danja's name suits him well. Here, he shares the tales behind some of his greatest tracks. —Tracy Garraud

"WHAT GOES AROUND... COMES AROUND"/ "MY LOVE" - JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE

"We didn’t discuss any concepts with Future Sex/Love Sounds, everything just came out. 'What Goes Around' was the very first song we did for the start of that album. I like to have the studio for a little bit before anyone, so I got in there before Timb and when he came I just started playing that core sound with the guitar. Then he came right in with the drums. And Justin just started walking around the room humming melodies. The track took a couple hours and the song took two days.

'My Love' came after "What Goes Around." Timb did a track before where I was just stuck questioning why am I even doing this. I think I was stuck for one day or two. Funny because that song he did didn’t even make the album even though Justin did a song to it… 'My Love' changed the whole album. I had some songs I was experimenting with and I kept asking how can I flip this. Justin had this guy named J Anderson and he heard what I was doing in my headphones and was like ‘What the fuck is that?!’ I heard dance and techn and was always interested in it but didn’t really know where to go. But I went to a club one night and saw that people were losing their mind to these dance tracks. It wasn’t really that I wanted to mimic that sound. I just wanted to have that energy and have people going crazy. So I knew the fusion was putting R&B with trance. As soon as I put the boom boom kat, I knew it.

A lot of [that track] is definitely me and Timb came through and added a couple of things later, he beatboxed on it of course and add a couple little sounds. The basis of it was is me and then we collaborated on the finish of it. The energy from that song carried for a long time. That whole album brought a newness to the business.

"SEXY BACK" - JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE

"'My Love" was the track that definitely carried the energy for the rest of the album. After that we did 'Sexy Back', 'Summer Love', 'The End Of Time,' 'Sexy Ladies'… all within an hour the next day. We was feeling good [laughs]

I still don’t understand the title of 'Sexy Back', but it worked [laughs]. Everyone from Access Hollywood to MTV was saying he’s bringing sexy back, but we didn’t think that deep about it. There was no conversation about it. I'm bringing sexy back was the first thing out of Justin's mouth when he was listening to that track. It was an unorthodox chorus and just took off. It’s incredible watching Justin work because he’s like a rapper freestyling. I had no idea that he wrote that well. If I could go back into the studio and find one shred of paper with one lyric from that album, I’d sell it on Ebay for $2 million. But I’m never going to find that piece of paper. He wrote these songs all in his head. That’s rare. It was incredible."

"No. 1" - Rick Ross

"That record… oh man, it was one of those DJ Khaled 11^th hour ‘I need this in the next 30 minutes!’ plays. The track first of all is way crazier than what's on the album. It was not mixed out, they took out some of my sounds, they completely fucked up my track. I usually get my engineer to mix my records, but she wasn’t available and it needed to be turned in that night. My artist, Kevin Cossom did a chorus on that track that’s way doper than the chorus they have now.

It was the same concept, but what made it hard was that Khaled kept blowing us up to get it done [laughs]. On KC’s mixtape we’re putting the original version. Like I said it was a last minute , but Ross still did his thing. I’m a big fan of his, always wanted to work with him, but on his next I definitely want to get in the studio and vibe. I know that I can give him everything that they attempted doing on a lot of different albums. But I feel like this particular one is an L on my record. I can’t even stomach listening to it. It’s not even what it’s supposed to do as far as musically. I did a lot of different music changes and there’s another sound in it that’s crazy that’s really low and you can’t even hear it and that was the driving part of his verse.

I want to say that there's something rhythmically wrong in the verse. It’s just wrong [laughs] I never heard Ross’ verses on the record, we just did the hook and the track. I heard the final when the album came out, I didn’t even know Trey Songz was on it till the album came out. I’m like ‘Yeah! I got one on Ross. I feel like it’s crazy!’ Then I open up the album and I’m like 'Nooo! I can’t believe they did me like this!' [laughs] The track is chopped up in different places, the structure is just wrong. I told Khaled to let me remix that record and put it out as a single. It felt like it had single potential, but wasn’t all the way there. Unfortunately that didn’t happen though."

"HELLO GOOD MORNING" - DIDDY/DIRTY MONEY

I did the track originally for Usher... that would’ve been crazy if he nailed. I sent that track to Mark Pitts, me and Rico Love were working together, we did the "So Many Girl"s record first which was originally for Dr. Dre’s Detox album, but that’s another story.

So "Hello Good Morning"... Mark loved it. I think Usher heard it and loved it too, but I don’t know what happened. Sometimes I do tracks and they’ll just float around and then randomly pop up. So some time later I was in Miami and Diddy was like 'Yo I got this joint that’s crazy!' I knew he was loving it, but I didn’t know 100% he wanted it as his first single. So he played it for me and It was dope, but it was left. I had to live with it a little bit to understand it because there wasn’t a prevalent chorus on it. After Diddy laid his vocals though, I really liked the way he sounded. Even though he was singing, his vibe was on point. Nicki killed it. Ross did his thing, but that was a last minute thing to throw him on it. I don’t think Tip was warmed up yet because that was one of the first verses he did since coming out [of jail]. I wasn’t loving it but I wasn’t mad at it either.

I was supposed to be in the video but I couldn’t make it. I definitely didn’t know Swizz was going to be in the video though. I’m cool with Swizz he always shows a lot of love, but when I saw him in the video I thought damn everyone’s going to think he produced it. Luckily Diddy went hard saying it was me who did. I’m cool with being in the background, but I’m going to present myself properly and step out there [more]. But I want it to be 100% right, because from that point on it will be different."

"SO MANY GIRLS" - USHER

"I did this track at the top of 2009, maybe 2008. Either way, I did the track and was like This. Is. Crazy. I originally did the track for Dr. Dre for Detox. I know Jimmy Iovine heard it and liked it but I don’t know if Dre heard it. It was intended for him and that was that. So after going through the hoops of if he heard or not, I just ended up giving it to Usher way later. I knew at this point he needed a single and they were going to go with it as a single at one point, but they did a couple other songs."


“WE TAKIN' OVER” - DJ KHALED

"Khaled hit me like 'Yo I need a record!’ At the time he mentioned liking “Promiscuous Girl” so I wanted to make a hip-hop version of that record. In my mind it was about the tempo of "Promiscuous," I just flipped it into a darker way. So Khaled comes in and gets excited he’s walking around saying 'This is a hit!' then runs out the studio and makes everyone listen to it. Khaled always gets me going! I always have in mind a record that I’ve done in the past that’s already a hit so I pretty much give DJs an alleyhoop. I don’t know if they realize that [laughs] You can easily go from “Promiscuous Girl” into “We Taking Over.”

“PROMISCUOUS GIRL” - NELLY FURTADO

"Me and Timabalnd did that song before we even got in the studio with Nelly. We did the whole album for Nelly, then we played that song and she was a little bit iffy [and said] we’ll come back to it. But throughout the making of the album, it left room for that. That was literally the last song we recorded and became the biggest hit. It was just one of those unstoppable records."

Big thanks to VIBE for the very insightful article!

Source:VIBE True Studio Stories