1. Intro
2. Divine Timing
3. Cypher

Intro

This isn’t a usual car post folks. I have been investing more time and energy into another love of mine besides cars. If y’all have been reading, I’ve been sharing my thoughts surrounding hip-hop. In my recent post, I wrote about J. Cole’s latest album, The Fall-Off, which you can read about here. Recently, I’ve started to wonder “What if I focused my energy on hip-hop?”. This question came about because simply, I don’t know if the time I’m investing into car culture is fulfilling. Now before I get cancelled and you start thinking “What has this fool done for the car community?” and “This dude is feeling entitled to recognition huh?”, let me explain!

Since a youngin’ I’ve loved cars. I’ve dreamt about customizing and driving all sorts of cars and fortunately, I got a taste of it. Reality is, the hobby is expensive and right now I don’t have the luxury of affording car parts. That doesn’t stop me from engaging with the car enthusiast community however. Going forward I’m going to focus on the niches where I feel fulfilled and those niches include: Honda’s, Porsche’s, and drifting.

Divine Timing

In essence, if we were to compare cars and hip-hop to the astronomical subjects in our universe, the sun would represent cars and the moon would represent hip-hop. Hear me out: majority of the day, I’m thinking about cars as it’s something I see everyday. As Earth revolves around the sun and the sun goes away, the light goes away. As light retracts, the darkness rolls in and what do we see in the sky (assuming there’s no light pollution)? The moon and the stars. To be fair, whether it’s day or night, the sun and the moon are always there, they’re just located somewhere else in orbit. It’s a stretch but if you get me, I’m just tryna say that hip-hop has always been there. As I’m writing this, all I can think about is Common’s “I Used to Love H.E.R.” from his Resurrection album (1994).

It may be pure coincidence, my FBI agent, my social media algorithm, or the stars aligning but when I decided to commit more time and energy to hip-hop, I logged onto Instagram and found an event ad for the Redbull BC One Denver Cypher! The event was one week away at the time I saw the ad and immediately bought a ticket. Breaking has always been an interest of mine since I was maybe 10 years old. At around 15 years old, I had the opportunity to learn the basic 6-step. I learned it but it never stuck through. Then at 19-21 years old, I learned top rock basics like the Indian step, side step, kick step, and hip twist from Ceech Hsu in my early-college years. I’ve diverted and went into choreographed dance for a couple years but somehow, I always ended up watching freestyle battles whether it’s popping, all-style, or breaking. On April 3rd, 2026, I think I started to realize how much I loved breaking.

On that day, I attended the Redbull BC One Denver Cypher at the Boettcher Concert Hall in the Denver Performing Arts Complex. I had no expectations prior to arriving at the event. I didn’t know how big the complex would be, which breakers were attending, and how the event was gonna go. All I’ve seen were breaking battles online. This was my first time attending a breaking event and experiencing something that is fundamentally hip-hop.

Cypher

To break it down, no pun intended, there were 8 B-girls and 16 B-boys participating in these 1-vs-1 battles. The Top 3 B-girls and B-boys would head on to the next set of battles in San Diego, California, USA happening on August 22, 2026. Eventually, the winners from San Diego would then deserve a spot to compete at the Redbull BC One Final in Toronto, Canada on November 29, 2026 (Redbull). If you’re interested in checking out the battles from the past event, you’ll be sure to find them on YouTube from various breaking-media channels.

2.5 hours of battling later, my hands were tired from clapping and my voice was getting strained from yelling. The energy in there was insane because of the level of artistry, athleticism, and raw-individuality coming from each breaker. The hypest battle of the night for me was in the quarter finals or Top 8, between Babalu and Create. There were other crazy battles as well but at the end of the competition the Top 3 B-girls were 1) Janada, 2) KT, and 3) India. As for the Top 3 B-boys, they were 1) Bowzee, 2) Create, and 3) Valencio. Coming in to this event, I had no clue who was competing. After the event, I came out with some favorites which of whom I’ll start to follow as the culture of breaking and hip-hop thrives.

I got home after scarfing down a 3×3 burger from In N Out and all I did was obsess over breaking until I snapped myself out of it and went to bed. In all, my love and appreciation for breaking and hip-hop grew immensely. As of right now, I wanna be involved in this community but I don’t how just yet. I just had to share my experience as a first time witness to breaking cyphers happening on stage. Hip-hop reveals a lot of things in me and one thing’s for sure: I love a good beat to vibe to. And that can be applied to anything in life. I just have to get down and follow suit…