What do street gang members call their leader? Now that's not such an easy question to answer as it first appears. Personally I can't see street-wise, hard edged boys and girls or young men and women for that matter, calling their gang leader ‘Boss’ or ‘leader’ or ‘sir.’ So do they just use the chap’s street name, as in:
“Sure thing, LJ, I’ll get right on it.”

I’m looking for a commonality in a perhaps generic name for street gang leaders.

Any help would be appreciated.

Is this for your book?

Every gang is at least slightly different in what they call each other rank-wise. It's basically like a military system almost. One common position would be a "shot-caller" which would be the highest ranking person in your clique, but that "shot-caller" would report to a, say, block or 'hood "shot-caller", who reports to an even higher ranking official...

If a gang member is told to do something, he just does it, no formalities.

Crips call each other "Crip" or "Cuz". Bloods call each other "Blood". Mexicans call each other "essa" (essay) don't know how to spell it... now they're saying something like "waay".

They have different "battle crys" or signals that something is going down... Bloods will say "Soooo Wooo"... that means, ATTENTION!! Or COME ON! There are hand signals as well.

There's no one easy answer to your question unless you know what gang specifically you want to know about.

Try a show called "Gangland" on History Channel, you should be able to watch episodes online or rent the episodes on DVD. Each episode features a different gang and has a lot of factual information on their structure, their roots, what they do, their signs, their tattoos, etc. There are also lots of books on the subject, although watch the date of the books printing as you probably want up to date info.

Hope that helps. If you have a specific gang you want to know about, maybe I can help you more.

http://www.history.com/minisites/gangland

Hello Long:

I don't think there's a damn thing that's going to help yo white bread a$$. You haven't a clue about gang stuff.

You can learn, though. I don't recommend going into the neighborhood and asking questions. But, you can rent a few movies. I'd get these: American Me, Boys In The Hood, American History X, Blood In, Blood Out, Colors, Menace ll Society (good one!), South Central and others.

Do that, and I'll bet you can come back and tell US about the gangs.

excon

I agree with Exy,stay away from the hood.I found a link that might be helpful.
The number one rule in literature is write what you know.
Keep that in mind as I have read books where the author tries to incorporate gangs or use street slang and it somehow rings false.
I live in a hood(now dubbed a culturally diverse community) so I hear it everyday.There's a whole lot of f... in' going on.And of course the one that I detest the most the N word is
Peppered into every sentence.

"Gang Slang and Terms - Gangs OR Us Gang Identification

artlady, I tried to visit your link and it was the gang site for a minute and then it morphed into a Chinese sex site!!

I just went there and it didn't happen to me.I don't understand.I even hit some of the links and I didn't get a warning from my anti viral software.
Weird! Sorry about that ,I just can't explain it.

It would depend on the gang. Some gang members might actually call their leader "boss" or "sir", but depends on the gang. For example, in La Cosa Nostra (Italian mafia) they call the leader either "Godfather", in the Yakuza they call their leader "Big Brother".