words: Damien Scott
photos: Steven Brahms
“We like the warriors, playboy! You ever seen the Warriors?” Asks Headstrong, one of the original members of the storied Brooklyn based gang, the Decepticons, in between sips of his St. Ides. “We was really like the fucking Warriors!” You can see the excitement seeping through his teeth when asked to talk about the groups past exploits. He’s told this story before. And he can’t wait to tell it again.
But as excited as Headstrong is, he’s not the one that’s going to be doing most of the talking today. Nah, he plays it cool and chills in the corner of the weathered and worn central room of the two-bedroom apartment in Crown Heights, Brooklyn that acted as the gang’s headquarters in the late ’80s and ’90s. He leaves the history retelling in the hands of the group’s leader, Cyclone. A heavyset dude, now in his mid-30s, Cyclone just seems like the leader. He has the collected composure of one. Not easily excitable, endlessly knowledgeable about his group and willing and able to share the history when the time asks. But, surprisingly enough, he wasn’t always the HNIC. His late brother Megatron was.
Megatron, along with his brother Cyclone and friend Rumble started the Decepticons back in 1984 after an altercation with some members of the Five Percent Nation that attended the Brooklyn Technical high school. Rumble chose to use the name of the Transformers bad-guy set and matching monikers to mask their real identities when trying to get at rival crews. And If you’re thinking in retrospect that naming your gang after a cartoon is silly, don’t worry, people thought the exact same thing back then. “We went up to Brooklyn Tech, and we went downtown by the big clock waiting for dude to come out of the train station,” remembers Cyclone. “As soon as he comes out, Rumble yells, “Decepticons, attack!” Niggas is looking around like, What the fuck are you talking about?”
Soon enough everyone knew who the Decepticons were. As the years went by they gained more members and their exploits became crazier and crazier. Shootouts with rival crews outside of their apartment building, rolling up to NYC high schools fully strapped with nothing less than .22’s to rob as many people as they could became common occurrences. They even spawned an all female arm of the crew called the Deceptinettes who, according to Cyclone and Headstrong, were worse than the men. But as bad as the Decepticons were as a whole, their members weren’t bad kids who grew up in dire living conditions. Well, at least not all of them. For the most part, they were your average inner city youths, just looking for something to do.
“The media tried to portray us like we were all from awful upbringings but it’s not like that, man,” explains Cyclone. “When you’re a child, you get caught up in certain things. We was running together way before we even had a name, once we got a name, the streets picked up on it. And then the media catches it because it’s in the police reports.” As hard as the media and police tried to hone in on the Decepticons, their efforts were for the most part fruitless. Unlike other gangs of the era and even now, the Decepticons were relatively invisible. They didn’t wear any easily identifiable symbols or rags. Nor did they dress similar to rock the color purple (their color of choice). That’s why the name Decepticons stuck so well. At any moment, each one of their members, who individually didn’t seem all too menacing, could flip a mental switch, or transform, and wild out. Or as Headstrong and Jamar, a “second generation” Decepticon so eloquently put it:
“You’ll probably see a dude with glasses on walk right past you…”
“…And then stab you in the throat!”
The Decepts hit a low point in 1988 when their leader Megatron was shot during a botched robbery attempt. After sustaining two shots to the head, he was brought to a local hospital and under went surgery to remove the shells from his head. He remained in rehab until his death in 2000. Now over 15-plus years removed from their glory days, the original Decepticons have kind of turned over a new leaf. And while they don’t apologize for their past, they do acknowledge its faults.“[Looking back] I feel bad that now I’m grown,” admits Cyclone. “But I think that made me who I am, without that, I don’t think I’d be who I am.”
In addition to their new outlook, they’re trying to use the Decepticon name for good instead of, well, you know. Velocity Films and DreamWorks Pictures approached them about doing a movie based on the beginning of the Decepticons. The film stars Fredro Starr and rapper Tru Life as well as some real Decepticons, like Cyclone. They’ve also rekindled their love of hip-hop and started a mixtape series with the intentions of helping it regain its stake as the hip hop epicenter. It seems they have also grown tired and weary of the state of New York rap. “At one time you could do what you wanted to do be accepted,” sighs Headstrong. “Now it’s about counting your money. We’re older so we trying to do something a different, but we got to adapt to shit.”
The best part of the Decepticon renaissance is their plan to open community centers in Brooklyn and then hopefully all throughout New York that city children can go to learn different skills and trades like, word processing, programming and computer graphics. With New York’s zero tolerance for gangs and the NYPD’s complete lack of racial sensitivity, the Decepts don’t want the youth the become the next Sean Bell’s. With such noble causes and promising future ventures, it seems that a lot more people will be hearing the Decepticons story. I know Headstrong can’t wait.
