Quest Kuriaki is one of the fewest versatile songwriter/artists in the industry. At beginning of his career, Quest Kuriaki learned the art of being a self-managed artist and self booking agent which brought him gigs with exposure amongst top tier venues including the 116th Street Puerto Rican Festival, 110th Street All Latin festival, SALUTE Entertainment’s Talent Showcase hosted by DJ Dennis Da Menace, Club Underground, Club Deep, Speed (Formerly Club Carbon), Club Exit, Jimmy’s Bronx Café, Mumbai, just to name a few. While he continued demonstrating his artistic gift as an emcee, he began showing off his skills as a DJ. He opened for other DJs and cleverly seized those opportunities to self promote his music and further popularize the “Young Quest” name to the entertainment community (as he was known then).
In the early 2000s, Stef La Kallejera and DJ Kazzanova formed a Freestyle Battle Night at the Copacabana. Quest’s friend deviated from the sign up rules, literally picked up Quest, placed him on stage and said to DJ Kazzanova, “…I have somebody who’s gonna bust everybody’s ass on stage…”. DJ Kazzanova laughed at the remark and took the challenge. Quest was placed against three other battlers and they were demolished. During the course of the evening, Quest won battle after battle, gained respect from the crowd and other battle challengers. After weeks of dominating the Copacabana, Quest continued to rock other battles given by Hot 97 (The 100 MC Battle), MTV, as well as continued to perform at SALUTE Entertainment’s Showcases. While Young Quest was on stage lyrically destroying his opponents, he expanded his talent and ventured into www.takeoverradio.com, which was one of the first all-internet radio streaming stations in 2006. After his initial hit to the internet airwaves, his program “The Take Over” became the number one show of the entire station. This further proved that Quest was multi-faceted in another realm of the music industry.
At Quest’s final performance as an unknown artist for a Salute Showcase in 2008, DJ Dennis Da Menace dubbed him as the newest member of SALUTE Entertainment. In the same evening, Fight Club’s CEO, Von Jeff, expressed interest in having Quest perform at the next underground battle. After blessing his talents at Fight Club, Quest decided to take a new leaf on his talent and left the battling game with support by DJ Dennis Da Menace. Quest felt he needed more of a challenge in the radio game and left “The Take Over” and joined www.alistradio.net as an intern under DJ Dennis Da Menace and L BOOGS (of Hot 97 and MTV Tr3s) in September of 2008 with his addition of comical voice impersonations. As a result of the positive feedback to this humor, Quest was offered to join the show as an on-air personality and also on a show with DJ Dennis Da Menace, K7 of TKA, & DJ Ric Roc.
Due to a car accident Quest suffered, he was awarded a settlement which he used to purchase recording and mixing equipment that enabled him to become his own recording engineer and producer. From that point, Quest applied his skills to the “Remix” game on popular songs and as it turns out, the track “Dat Girl Right There”, originally w/ Ludacris and Usher, became the number one downloaded song in Massachussetts’ Top Charts for two weeks consecutively. At DJ Dennis Da Menace’s birthday celebration at Madison in 2008, Quest’s first Mixtape was launched, and titled “The Remix”, which contained artists such as Ryan Leslie, Usher, Ludacris, Akon, Eminen, Danity Kane, Jay-Z and Lil’ Wayne. This drove Quest to write more remixes as well as original records. As a result of “The Remix” compilation, DJ Dennis Da Menace unveiled Quest’s first music video with his version of Lil Wayne’s “A Millie”. With all this given, Quest was not only mastering the art of remixing his lyrics to popular music but was motivated to further write his own original musical work. His buzz expanded to a higher aristocracy of various DJ Crews including The Heavyhitters and The Big Dawg Pitbulls due to the success of the remix and video.
In the beginning of 2009, Quest debuted his first original song titled “She Gets it Poppin’” featuring well-known Reggaeton artist Notch. This song was well received to radio stations globally including Australia, Miami, Orlando, Los Angeles, San Diego, Boston, Philadelphia, Connecticut, Texas, North Carolina, Europe, and The Dominican Republic. Fellow SALUTE Member, DJ Yonny, also released a House Version and DJ Dennis Da Menace produced the Reggae remix of the song. While Quest’s first single buzzed to a large demographic, he worked on his second successful record titled “Now We Sip”. This single topped “She Gets It Poppin’” with 35,000 downloads in the first WEEKEND alone.
In 2010, Quest decided to make a big transformation of his identity in the Music Industry to reflect the ongoing metamorphosis in his career as a songwriter and artist. Considering everything he has encountered, accomplished, learned and applied, the name “QUEST KURIAKI” emerged like a phoenix. When asked why the selection of the name, Quest Kuriaki responded, “…Kuriaki is a name of a meaningful family member who passed away and Quest is who I am so I put them together to create a unique and memorable identity in the music industry…” With those words, we will be hearing more of Quest Kuriaki in the near future with more power poppin’ tracks, known artists, and versatility of his limitless talent to show the world. As an artist, songwriter, lyricist, radio personality, producer and DJ, Quest Kuriaki will prove that originality, talent, an open mind for all genres and trendsetting styles can not only make you move but that this will set a new standard on what we call music.