TNT Boys Unveils “The Future Is Now” for New York Carnival 2013
TNT Boys Mas Band entered the 2013 New York Carnival season with a forward-looking presentation appropriately titled “The Future Is Now.”
The Brooklyn band introduced its costumes ahead of the West Indian American Day Carnival, giving masqueraders an early look at the presentation that would eventually make its way onto Eastern Parkway for Labor Day.
By this point, TNT Boys had already spent several years growing within Brooklyn’s mas community. The 2013 season would become one of the band’s most memorable, with band leader Derek Beckles later recalling that TNT Boys finished first that year.
Watch TNT Boys “The Future Is Now” 2013
Chandelle “Chandy” De Riggs hosted the Julianspromos coverage, while Julian C. Hackett shot and edited the footage.
The video was uploaded on August 8, 2013.
“The Future Is Now”
The title gave TNT Boys a theme built around movement, ambition and looking ahead.
Band launches and costume showcases are where a Carnival presentation first comes to life. Individual sections are introduced, models bring the designs onto the stage, and prospective masqueraders begin deciding where they want to play mas for Labor Day.
For TNT Boys, “The Future Is Now” was the presentation carrying the band into New York Carnival 2013.
At that point in the summer, Eastern Parkway was still ahead.
The costumes were fresh.
Sections were being introduced.
And the band still had several weeks to prepare before the presentation moved from the showcase into the streets of Brooklyn.
From Friends to a Brooklyn Mas Band
TNT Boys began in 2005, growing out of a group of friends from different Caribbean islands who spent time together around Church Avenue in Brooklyn.
Beckles later described the band’s beginnings simply: the group enjoyed Carnival together and eventually decided to form its own mas band.
That background gave TNT Boys a distinctly New York Caribbean identity.
Rather than being built around only one island, the group reflected Brooklyn itself — Caribbean people from different backgrounds coming together through Carnival.
By 2013, eight years had passed since those early beginnings.
TNT Boys was no longer just a group of friends deciding to play mas together. It had developed into an established Carnival band producing full presentations for the West Indian American Day Carnival.
Building a Carnival Presentation
A band launch only shows the finished designs.
Getting those designs onto Eastern Parkway requires much more.
Once the presentation is unveiled, mas camps move into their busiest period of the year. Costumes have to be produced in quantity, masqueraders registered, sections organized and road logistics prepared.
Each individual costume eventually becomes part of something larger.
By Labor Day, models on a launch stage are replaced by entire sections moving together behind music trucks through Brooklyn.
That transformation is one of the defining parts of Carnival season.
For TNT Boys, the summer of 2013 was about taking “The Future Is Now” from presentation to parade.
A Band With a Caribbean Mix
The multicultural origins of TNT Boys remained part of the band’s character as it grew.
Beckles described the founding group as friends from different Caribbean islands, an identity that fits naturally within New York Carnival.
Eastern Parkway brings individual island traditions together in one parade.
Trinidadian-style mas, Grenadian Soca, Vincentian music, Bajan influences, Jamaican sounds and traditions from across the region all meet within Brooklyn’s wider Caribbean community.
TNT Boys developed inside that environment.
Its origin story was less about representing a single nationality and more about a Caribbean group in New York building a Carnival experience together.
Then Came Eastern Parkway
The West Indian American Day Carnival took over Eastern Parkway on September 2, 2013, bringing the year’s band presentations into their final form.
For TNT Boys, the season ended with a result the band would remember for years.
When Caribbean Life profiled TNT Boys in 2019, Beckles specifically pointed back to 2013 as the year the band placed first.
That makes “The Future Is Now” one of the more important presentations in the group’s history.
The season began with costumes being introduced in Brooklyn.
It ended with TNT Boys celebrating one of its strongest Carnival results.
TNT Boys After 2013
The band returned the following year with another presentation, “Species: Life of the Caribbean,” continuing its place within New York’s mas community.
TNT Boys would remain active for years afterward, introducing new themes and bringing its own sections, music and masqueraders to Eastern Parkway.
But 2013 remained a standout year.
A band that began with a circle of friends in 2005 had grown into a competitive Brooklyn Carnival organization.
And for TNT Boys, “The Future Is Now” proved to be more than just a theme.
Julianspromos Coverage
Chandelle “Chandy” De Riggs hosted the Julianspromos coverage of TNT Boys’ 2013 presentation.
Julian C. Hackett shot and edited the footage, which was uploaded on August 8, 2013.
Together with the two photographs from the presentation, the video revisits TNT Boys during the summer that led into one of the band’s most successful New York Carnival seasons.
The costumes were called “The Future Is Now.”
A few weeks later, TNT Boys took them to Eastern Parkway — and finished the year on top.
