Thornton student on the rise with recent release ‘Brown Skin Brown Liquor’

If you are looking for the perfect February anthem, look no further: released right in time for Black History Month and Valentine’s Day, “Brown Skin Brown Liquor” by Ronnie Quest, a senior majoring in music industry, is a romantic, R&B song that has garnered over 12,000 listens on Spotify, and 20,000 across all platforms in just two weeks. 

After having the phrase “brown skin brown liquor” stuck in his head, Quest built upon a beat created by his producer Natty Clxssic, a senior majoring in music composition at the University of California, Los Angeles, to produce the ultimate romantic, late-night anthem.

“You’re kind of supposed to feel like drunk [while listening to it],” Quest said. “Like you’re with somebody that you like and it’s a late night and you’re driving around downtown L.A.”

“Brown Skin Brown Liquor” was not Quest’s first music release. Quest has been releasing beats on SoundCloud since high school when he would make remixes and beats with his friends, such as “Let Me Get Your Email,” inspired by the high school boys’ attempts to get girls’ email. In collaboration with fellow musician and friend Dejohn Crosse, Quest also released the hip hop and rap song “Without Further Ado” during high school.

In Quest’s junior year of high school, a competing school made a diss track about his school, to which Quest and his friends responded with a diss track of their own.

“My friends [and I] remixed Drake’s ‘Back to Back’ making it ‘Gonna Beat Them Back to Back’ and we dropped that on SoundCloud,” Quest said. “It got like 5000 plays in one night and we thought we were the biggest thing on Earth.”

Quest’s musical upbringing goes back to his early years. His cultural and familial background was a great influence on his musical tastes. Quest’s father was in a rock band, and his mother played the piano. His mother’s Jamaican roots also led him to appreciate dancehall, reggae and Afrobeats. His friend’s older cousin, Baffour, also introduced him to a variety of African music from a very young age. Even Quest’s barber, one of the first people to ever believe in Quest’s musical aspirations, used to be a concert promoter in the industry. As such, Quest grew up in a highly musical environment, constantly surrounded by all different types of music.

“I was listening to everything. I was listening to jazz one day, heavy metal the next, Latin jazz and then disco the next day,” Quest said.

All of the different sounds he was exposed to laid a foundation for him to be interested in all different types of music, Quest said. It opened him up to sounds beyond what was available on the radio and gave him a more global perspective on music. In addition to all the different sounds Quest was exposed to, he took guitar, trumpet, percussion and piano lessons in his childhood, giving him a more solid musical education and foundation.

When Quest was in middle school, he discovered one of his first musical influences: Soulja Boy. After seeing Soulja Boy drop out of school at 16 and make millions off a song, a 12-year-old Quest realized he wanted to pursue that same goal with his music career.

“So my brain was like, ‘Alright, I’m going to learn how to make beats,’” Quest said. “‘I’m 12 now, that gives me four, five years to get my shit together so I can make a viral single, become a millionaire and drop out when I’m 16.’”

Quest also admired many other famous musicians and bands, such as Guns and Roses, Lil Wayne, Vybz Kartel and Dom Kennedy, for how they were able to communicate feelings and moods musically, which is what Quest himself aspires to accomplish today with his music as well.

“On a more elementary level, it’s really just about making you feel something,” Quest said.

Quest credits the Thornton School of Music, as where his immersion in music really took off. In his sophomore year, Quest was roommates with another musician, Pure Luxury. During that time, Pure Luxury was releasing music and blowing up as an artist. Quest and his other roommate Rod Henley, a senior majoring in business with a minor in music industry, stepped in to help manage and do public relations for Pure Luxury, which allowed Quest to apply the theories he learned in lectures to real-life situations.

“A music law class is all theoretical, unless you’re actually reading a contract,” Quest said. “Because my roommate at the time was just going crazy and blowing up, I was reading actual contracts. And I would walk back into my dorm from class like, ‘Oh shit, we’re doing this and this wrong, we should be doing it this way.’”

Being around Thornton students playing music and finding success in their art was a huge inspiration for Quest, and it drove him to explore his own musical ambitions.

“We’d always be working and bouncing off each other’s ideas and freestyling it in Cardinal Gardens and just having people come over and playing beats,” Henley said. “It was just kind of like this little music hub.” 

Quest’s experience managing public relations for Pure Luxury gave him a taste of real music industry work and gave him a special advantage as a new artist. From writing incredible lyrics and hooks to sending press releases to media outlets to promote his music, Quest’s knowledge about the music industry as a whole makes him a bit of a triple threat: writing, singing and marketing.

At USC, Quest was involved in many aspects of the music scene. He DJ-ed for GearFest — an annual musical event thrown by the Black Student Association — helped set up audio equipment for various events and performed at a few open mics around campus. 

However, his biggest claims to fame were the annual Thriller parties he threw off USC campus with Henley for two years. Quest and Henley would advertise the party to USC students as well as students from all over the L.A. area, including UCLA, Chapman University, Loyola Marymount University and California State University, Northridge. Each time, around 1,000 students attended, and Henley said he remembers these Thriller parties as some of his favorite memories with Quest.

In a seventh grade martial arts class, Quest met the person who would become his producer: Natty Clxssic. Clxssic grew up classically trained in piano before he started to create his own beats and instrumentals. After crossing paths with Quest going into college, Clxssic and Quest started an incredible working relationship and friendship.

“I saw that [Quest] had kind of an interesting sound, and he was someone I just wanted to work with,” Clxssic said. “I ended up reaching out, and we started this really good kind of working music duo.”

Quest and Clxssic are able to build off of each other’s creative talents and abilities, with Clxssic having an incredible ear for overall sound and Quest being able to freestyle “catchy melodies and hooks on the spot.” When the pair are in the studio together, the creative energy flows naturally, making it easy for the two to produce music.

“When I produce with [Quest], he usually gets some sort of creative energy out of me that comes from him,” Clxssic said. “I think we have mutual respect for each other as musicians, and he respects my decisions to the point where I have creativity or freedom as an artist, which I really appreciate. And I think I expect the same of him.” 

With their recent release, “Brown Skin Brown Liquor,” both Clxssic and Quest hope the songcan be a “February anthem,” relevant for both Valentine’s Day and Black History Month. Quest has plans to release a new R&B track in the next month titled “Independent,” which will only be one song in a tight line of releases planned out for the rest of the year with songs scheduled to release once a month. Quest even has plans to make the switch from R&B songs to more “dancehall summer vibes” he said.

“We have some exciting stuff coming out, especially for spring and summer,” Clxssic said. “Start looking out for more like Afrobeat kind of music, which is a whole other style of music that we haven’t really released yet.” 

Beyond “Brown Skin Brown Liquor,” Quest and Clxssic have plans to continue their working relationship and continue growing as artists together. Quest said he hopes to one day be able to support himself with his music, as well as to “create something that’s meaningful to people.” His ultimate goal is to accumulate a platform large enough to allow him to give back to his community. 

“If I could use [music] to change something and bring people together for a positive cause, I think that’s like the final end goal,” Quest said.