LUKAS FORCHHAMMER

Here in America, the big-brand collaborations kind of signify how far you've gotten. So in that sense, it's a giant kudos to us that we, within the first year, get to be the first ones to be the launchers of this Pepsi Sound Drop.

I just thought it would be awesome to become a lawyer, especially being from a neighborhood seeing the police rough up so many people unnecessarily, people who haven't done nothing. Growing up with kids from dysfunctional families and stuff, I just felt that some kind of difference could be done. And now I'm getting to do it with music instead.

The songs were there before the band was there, and it's my songs. And it's like, we're not in the 1950s. We can't call ourselves, like, 'The Revolvers' - it just doesn't work that way. And 'The Lukas Graham Band' just sounded wrong.

What hit me in the gut about hip-hop was that someone else grew up tough enough to be angry at the entire system.

I dropped out of law school when I got my record deal.

When my dad died, my world crumbled.

I find it a very, very powerful thing to be yourself and not to try and be something else and to use that as your biggest shield and your biggest attack in the world - to just be you.

I've always wanted to release records in America. That's where I believe the music belongs, and the style and the eclectic musical mix that we put together kind of belongs here.

The lyrics are the essential part in our songs.

I don't know why, but I don't fancy writing love songs; I never have.

I don't like the whole 'slander, slander' conversation that most political debates are these days. So I tend to keep my political standpoint not to myself, but just relatively private.

I think it's an important thing, if you grew up in a neighbourhood that's different from the rest of the world, to remember what was different about your place and keep that in your heart, because that's what made you.

In the early '90s, my cousin gave me a Snoop Dogg cassette tape, and the rawness of the lyrics were something new to me.

Dr. Dre's '2001' album changed modern pop music.

When you get frisked by the police at the age of 10, and they empty your schoolbag out in the street and kick your books around and calling you names because of where you live, you just get an anger towards everyone who is outside of your neighborhood.

Writing is very cathartic for me.

Seeing my child born is so much more important than anything else I've got going on.

A part of me understands why a mother is equally proud of all her children, but that little boy inside me just wants my mom to say, out loud but even just to me, 'I'm a little bit prouder of you.'

It's very satisfying when you see your song at the top of the charts.

We have a big fan base in Australia, but none of us have been before.

I really like singing. I believe that if I wasn't a good singer, I would have been tossed out of school.

I'll probably stay in Copenhagen... I can keep writing songs about my local community and about crime.

The furthest I can see is me being 60.

Our art, in a sense, is quite revolutionary.

I never want to lose sight of my roots... A lot of artists want the riches and the fame. I want to tell stories you can put into the context of your life.