Enter Benny Ben, one of those infamous aforementioned Korean beat-killers who represents Rivers Crew (alongside b-boys like Born and Physicx) and the Mighty Zulu Kingz (alongside b-boys like Machine and Casper.)
Born in May of 1987 in the unlikely city of Vienna, Austria (“the country of classical music,” as he calls it), Ben has a biography and a message that defies all expectations one might place on him as a Korean b-boy.
After living in several European countries, Ben began his time in the US when he was in middle school, primarily residing in the Boston area. It was during this period that he was first exposed to b-boying.
Was it an impromptu street battle in the Bronx? A coincidental run-in with an OG? A prophetic dream hinting at his future fortune?
Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly, depending on how you look at it), it was none of the above.
Ben’s unlikely primary encounter with b-boying came through a music video by the California-based punk bad The Offspring – the video for Pretty Fly for a White Guy, to be exact.
“There was a little part in the video where b-boys got down in a circle, and I told myself, ‘I’ve gotta try this out,’” Ben says.
Three years would go by before Ben felt that he had paid his dues long enough to consider himself a true b-boy.
“The first 3 years, I was only moving, doing movements without knowing the connection between the music and the dance,” he admits.
The transition took place a few years before Ben enrolled at the University of Illinois to study business. It was there that he began to associate with the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Hip Hop Congress, or UC Hiphop for short. He also met b-boys like Wayneski of the Mighty Zulu Kingz as he sessioned and battled across the Midwest.
In 2006, Ben himself was asked to join the Mighty Zulu Kingz.
“People think that battling 10 members of our crew is the way to get down, but that’s not it,” Ben says. “The battle is a traditional way – a form of an initiation – that the Zulu Kingz strive to maintain. It took me about six months to build with the members and etc. before I could get down with the crew.”
Only two years later, Ben would find himself rolling with Rivers Crew, one of Korea’s most accomplished and notorious b-boy crews.
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