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The Square Egg, once upon a time, was one of THE best live acts going in Miami, with a live hip-hop/jazz/soul kinda thang that has yet to be paralleled in quality in this town. But eventually, as too many people do, frontman Lee decamped to Brooklyn – boohoo! Luckily, though, that didn’t mean he abandoned his musical path. He’s been cranking out the jazzy jams marked by his signature chilled, breathy flow – lovers of D.A.I.S.Y.-age-type ish, take note. You’ll want to head out to one of his Miami gigs in the coming days, in celebration of his new solo full-length album, Meet Lee.
Tonight he’s at Jazid, starting at 11 p.m., and tomorrow he’s at the excellently comfortable Transit Lounge. Check it out and maybe beg him to come back.

Here’s some more goodness for lovers of golden-age hip-hop: yet another Nineties hip-hop night at Studio A this Saturday. Presented by Revolution Hip-Hop, RHH founder Virgil says he started it for an often-ignored demographic in Miami, those 25-and-olders who grew up on the real stuff and have nowhere left to hear it. And they want to – the event’s first edition, on May 31, was pretty well-attended. The always-excellent local MC Seven Star hosts, and DJs KNS and Anonymous spin all night. There will also be hip-hop trivia for free drinks! It’s ages 21+ with ID, free before midnight (doors open at 10 p.m.) and $5 after. Hopefully this can take off as a regular monthly night and infuse some much-needed love and energy into the club. Go support!! – Arielle Castillo

There’s no ignoring Ben Taylor's musical lineage: With James Taylor as dad and Carly Simon as
mom, Ben's prowess in songwriting and performance is proving itself to be as impressive as his parents’. Yet his unique style is less hippie and more hip-hop.

Ben's set to open up for mom tonight at the Gusman Center for the Performing Arts. What a night to witness both past and future share the same stage, especially considering it’s Simon’s first ever performance in Miami.

New Times had a chance to exchange couple Q&A emails with Ben in advance of the show. We discussed his upcoming album, The Legend of Kung Folk Part 1: the Killing Bite, his stance on downloading music, and his famous parents. Oh -- and not to mention his much talked-about remix of Snoop's "Sexual Seduction.” Now that's rock and roll. -- Esther Park

Ben Taylor performs with Carly Simon Friday, May 16. The Gusman Center, 174 E. Flagler St., Miami. Show starts at 8 p.m.; tickets cost $150 to $5,000 and benefit CHARLEE Homes for Children and GAP: Girls Advocacy Project. 305-374-2444, www.gusmancenter.org

New Times: How old were you when you picked up a guitar? Was it natural instinct that propelled you to play or was it something that you learned to love? Why not the turntable or tuba?

Ben Taylor: I finally started playing the guitar when I was 11 so that I could become a more musical person. I think the reason I chose that instrument was for its versatility and portability. It's no fun trying to lug a piano around...

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Tomorrow afternoon and evening, snag a free spot to learn some of the latest hands-on electronic beatmaking programs with George Acosta, Miami boy and legendary trance and progressive house DJ. (In 2007, Acosta was voted America’s Best DJ in DJ Times magazine. Also, remember those days at the Mix afterhours, circa late Nineties? If you do, albeit fuzzily, you’ll know this guy is no slouch.)

The SAE Institute of Technology in North Miami Beach will host the workshop, presented by IK Multimedia and featuring its latest virtual instrument software. Acosta will teach you how to use programs like SampleTank 2.5, Sonik Synth 2, SampleMoog, and SampleTron, as well as advise you on home studio acoustics.

Best of all, it’s totally free, and there are cool production-tech door prizes, as well as a drawing for one of IK’s Total Studio bundles (worth $1500). – Arielle Castillo

Here are the sign-up details:

Public workshop: 6 p.m.
SAE Institute Miami
16051 W Dixie Hwy # 200, North Miami Bch, FL 33160
Phone: 305 944 7494

Seating is limited. Attendees can reserve their free seat now by sending an
email to ik.events@ikmultimedia.com, with their name/email and date/location of clinic.

Scrolling the Weezy files doesn't always lead to stellar tracks. He's got plenty of home runs, too many triples, a decent amount of doubles, and straight up strikes out that don't even come close to a single on the windiest day.
But check this track out between Kanye and Lil Wayne that just hit the matrix not too long ago.
It's full of cocksure brisk rhymes, jokes, witty lyrics and bullshit...exactly the topics ppl love to see these two rap about in the first place.
Down the link here and delve into everything that's fresh about this track and hard to explain, yet easy to love from the first listen on.

--Jonathan Cunningham

The Virgins are the latest white-hot (in every respect, meow) NYC quartet you are going to really care about very, very soon, if you're not clued in already. In this week's issue of the Miami New Times, we tell you why in our music section's Live Wire department -- click here to read it. And as always, there was plenty of interview stuff that couldn't fit into the print edition, so scroll below for the full Q&A with the Virgins' founder and frontman, Donald Cumming.

How can you not love a band whose live show is basically a big, fun dance party where everyone is attractive? Check out the video clip below. -- Arielle Castillo

The Virgins perform Wednesday, May 21 as part of the Nylon Summer Music Tour at Revolution, 200 W. Broward Blvd., Ft. Lauderdale. Switches, Be Your Own Pet, and She Wants Revenge also perform. Doors open at 6:30 p.m., and tickets are $16. All ages are welcome. Call 954-727-0950, or visit www.jointherevolution.net.

New Times:: So tell me about the concept for the video shoot you did last night. Which song was it for? I heard you had a Victoria’s Secret model dancing for you inside [East Village bar] Lit.

Donald Cumming: The video was for the song “Rich Girls.” The concept was like, it was filmed at Lit on Second Avenue. For the past seven years or so I’ve just been going there all the time, and I’ve met so many people there and gotten to know so many people from going there so much. So it was really cool to film the video there, because it’s actually the first place we ever played the song -- my friend Frankie DJed it for us so we could hear it loud at a club.

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The verdict is in and New York rapper Remy Ma has been sentenced to 8 years in a federal prison for assault, weapon possession and attempted coercion after shooting her friend, Makeda Barnes Joseph, last July in a dispute over money. Remy Ma accused her girlfriend of stealing $3,000 from her and eventually shot Joseph in the stomach. Some reports say Remy stood over her friend's bleeding body and rifled through her purse before fleeing the scene.

There were a bunch of twisted facts to the case, but it was a senseless shooting no matter what. And yesterday, the judge gave Remy a fairly lengthy sentence because of it although she was facing 25 years.

The rapper was scheduled to get married to rapper Papoose a day earlier, but in a hilarious twist of luck, the wedding was called off because Papoose tried to smuggle Remy Ma a universal handcuff key. Now that's love.
You can read more about Papoose's thwarted attempt here and while it probably wouldn't have gotten Remy Ma very far, the fact that Papoose wanted to smuggle his bride-to-be a tool to help her escape is just cute and you can't really knock the brother for it.

Here's a hilarious Remy video to tide fans over although I'm sure she'll be releasing plenty of jailhouse rockers while she's locked up.

-Jonathan Cunningham

In this week's issue of the Miami New Times, we give you the rundown on Duran Duran's latest album, The Red Carpet Massacre, and the group's appearance next Monday at Mizner Park in Boca. Click here to read that story.

But of course, there are plenty of outtakes left from the interview with Nick Rhodes. Below, read the full Q&A. Also, check out this video from A&E's Private Sessions of the band performing one of the album's lead singles, "Falling Down." -- Arielle Castillo

Duran Duran performs Monday, May 19 at Mizner Park Amphiteater, 590 Plaza Real, Boca Raton. Also appearing is Your Vegas. The show starts at 8 p.m., and tickets cost $59.50 to $115. Visit www.ticketmaster.com.

New Times: Where have you been, generally, since this tour started, and how has it been received so far?

Nick Rhodes: I think I can say it's going spectacularly well. We started about a month or so ago in New Zealand and worked our way through Australia up through the Pacific Rim, Korea, and Japan -- we hadn't played there for quite a while, actually.

The show has been very well received. We've been having a lot of fun playing because it's a very different kind of show for us. It's broken up into three separate acts. There's an introduction at the beginning, which encompasses some of the songs from Red Carpet Massacre, and a lot of familiar songs. And then we're playing a 20-minute electro set, which is quite interesting because, I don't know, I've never known a rock band to do it… It's more sort of Kraftwerk style with the four of us lined up along the stage playing synthesizers and electronic drums. We've rearranged some of our older songs in that style, with a couple of surprises in there.

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We hear at the New Times camp are die fans of all things old school. So as I came across this stellar footage of Teddy P doing his thing (while still walking I might add) from 1979, it seemed appropriate to share it with the blogosphere.
He's undeniably looking good and as he belts out this jam, it's hard not to sing along.
Enjoy.

--Jonathan Cunningham

Instead of just posting an old song, this time around, Throwback Tuesdays brings you a bunch of video goodness of some Miami legends who represented a these-days-often-forgotten element of hip-hop: B-boying! (No b-girls in these videos, oh well – if anyone out there knows of some web videos of breakdancing Miami females, please pass them along and I will post).

The footage in this clip dates from about 10 years or so ago and features the Street Masters Crew, who are still active – check their sort-of-official-looking Myspace page here.
The moves are great, but the throwback jams in the background are pretty excellent as well. I especially love at the beginning how the voice-over yells: “We’re taking it back to the Hot Wheels days!” That first jam in the background is “Cheap Thrills” by Planet Patrol, released in 1983 but living on at that skating rink forever! I can taste the rectangular pizza and roller-skate-decorated sheet birthday cake now.

Don't know what the second song is -- someone help?

Third, of course, is “Clear” by CYBOTRON (i.e. the amazing Juan Atkins!) from around 1983… (And of course familiar to anyone who’s played Grand Theft Auto, Vice City).

Whoever made this video originally (it’s so hard to tell on YouTube!) thanks for the trips down memory lane, on several levels. – Arielle Castillo

While we’re on the subject of old dance jams, here’s another classic: “Security” by the Beat Club, which dropped around ’87 or ’88. This classic record had both that tinkle-tinkle that linked it both to freestyle and electro in these parts and the emerging early rave sound in England – which gave it massive legs, even cracking the Top 75 singles chart in the U.K.

Besides those amazingly creepy percolating bass and synth lines, what’s even more awesome is that Beat Club hail from Miami, made up mostly of the husband-wife team of Ony Rodriguez and Mirey Valls. They later formed their own label, Electrobeat , and still release music. The latest: a Beat Club full-length album, Minimalista, officially released this past January and available for download (for just $6.99!) on the web site.

The first, oh, decade’s history of the Beat Club is summed up in this 1995 article from Miami New Times. The band’s Wikipedia page also claims that this year should see a promotional tour by the group, but there’s not exactly a wealth of information on the Electrobeat site, and the label’s Myspace page seems to have been deleted.… Well, let’s hope they pop out of the woodwork again. -- Arielle Castillo

In case you missed the news in the world of Myspace and blogs, Dead Prez is popping up kinda randomly for a show tonight -- a pretty good coup for a weekly party in Hollywood, known as Mellow Mondays. It's a soul-poetry-funk-conscious sort of thang, and followers of that scene will recognize tonight's host, Asia, a hometown boy who's also been featured on HBO's Def Poetry.

Jonathan Cunningham recently chatted with M1, half (along with stic.man) of the politically outspoken duo, and -- surprise! -- he's not an Obama fan. Well, he may just have to swallow it, the way things are looking. Anyways, read that interview here.

Dead Prez are no strangers to Mellow Mondays, but the last time they performed at the party was in January of 2005. However, the group's official output has been kind of scattered lately -- their last album together as Dead Prez was 2004's Revolutionary But Gangsta. Since then, they've been focusing on solo work (stic.man's Manhood came out this past November), mix tapes, and collabo-type stuff. But, a new Dead Prez full-length is supposedly due November of this year, so maybe they'll have some new material to air out tonight.

Visit the Mellow Mondays Myspace page for full details.

In the meantime, enjoy this clip of Asia on HBO, in which he performs a piece called "The Waiting Hour." -- Arielle Castillo

In case you missed this on Deco Drive or Idolator, things went haywire on the set of Rick Ross' recent video shoot for his upcoming single, "Here I Am," featuring Nelly. A tiger hired to add some menace or flair or whatever to the set apparently wasn't a fan of the boss, and bit his trainer in protest. Wild animals, especially big cats, aren't props -- and karma is a bitch. Here's the news clip from Deco Drive. -- Arielle Castillo