Let's get one thing straight: Lucas Prata has nothing but love for DJ culture.

"I've been a club junkie since I was a kid," recalls the Queens native. "I'd run around New York City from club to club, getting there at 4 or 5 in the morning, to hear the best DJs in the world!" And its not just lip service; Lucas counts Paul van Dyk, Robby Rivera and David Morales in his own personal music collection. Still, with the dance genre facing an uphill battle on American radio, it doesn't help that the industry's marquee names lack public faces. "There's no face to dance music," Lucas explains. "Those guys are DJs, they're producers. They've become the superstars of dance music, whereas in the 80s and the 90s, the superstars were the vocalists. That [the change] is really when it started to go downhill. I love their music, I love what they do... but the face of dance music has really disappeared."

Not if Lucas has any say in the matter; in the past year, his face has appeared on everything from MTV's "My Super Sweet 16" to the Jumbotron at Shea Stadium. His last hit, "And She Said," made the rare crossover to mainstream radio, and his latest single, "We Got it Going On," looks poised to do the same. But it hasn't come easy, and the recent success is a culmination of hard work, years of effort, and a longstanding dream to make dance music a relevant part of the pop scene. 

"I love dance music! I came up through the freestyle chain and I danced for George Lamond for many years," he explains, speaking of the famed freestyle artist. But even as a rookie to the music industry, Lucas' aspirations went right to the top of the charts: "I always wanted to be on Top 40 radio," he says. "I wanted to give it a little flavor of dance. Basically, when I wrote the song [And She Said] I wanted to make sure it had a really memorable hook that would stick in your head, like an anthem. And I kept the melody really pop."

It was a smart move from someone who learned the music biz from the inside out. After dancing for Lamond, Lucas would also tour with hip-hop legends Salt -N- Pepa, start his own record label (Yo Pal! Records), and work promotions in the radio industry. "I thought, if I'm not going to be touring... I might as well work in the industry and get to know the business!" he says. He also toiled in the studio, making music on his own time and his own dime. "I ended up putting out a record by myself called 'Let's Get it On,'" Lucas says. "I went to the radio with no label, and I ended up getting about 45 stations to play this record. It was #1 in Miami, in Dallas, in Chicago... Everyone would say, 'wow, what a great record! What label is it on?' But there was no label. It was Lucas, all by himself!"

His ship really came in when Ultra Records started to show interest in the independent artist: "It's always good to spend someone else's money, right?" he laughs. Three years and several dance hits later, Lucas is that much closer to fulfilling his dream of combining the dance genre's sound with pop's commercial viability.

Not that it's been easy, given the current state of dance radio. "It doesn't help that there are only six stations left in the nation!" Lucas exclaims. "It doesn't help that of the six, two are on satellite radio and two are based out of high school radio stations. It's sad that when you open up Billboard or Monitor, there's only a tiny little section on dance music." But it hasn't always been that way, he reminds me. "In the mid 90s, dance music was pop. Real McCoy, La Bouche... all those groups were selling 3 or 4 million records worldwide, and it was considered mainstream music. Then hip-hop came long. I'm a fan of hip-hop, but it wiped it out."