Six-foot-seven Jeff Feinman looks he should be on the basketball court teaching kids to drive the lane and dunk instead of programming beats. But since 2000, geared up in b-boy baggy jeans and tilted Kangol hat, Feinman has been sequestered in the basement of Horizons Unlimited (located at 440 Potrero Street in San Francisco’s Mission district), guiding youth to fulfill their music dreams.

It sounds almost too good to be true: The DJ Project is a free music studio available to low-income teens kids and young adults five days a week. During their quarterly 12-week-long cycles, program founder Feinman and graduates of the program teach young men and women how to use music programs like Reason, ProTools and Peak, as well as record vocals in a sound booth. Additionally, students learn DJ skills, write business proposals to fund CDs and explore the legal aspects of a career in music.

“It’s an after-school arts program related to hip-hop culture,” explains Feinman. “[The kids] work start to finish, from conceptualization to the finished project, learning how to sell records and the business in the process. We also teach kids how to work collaboratively, how to present yourself; we do professional development and performance training.”

SF City Hall and other community groups have commended the DJ Project for its professional approach and success at keeping kids away from gang activity. The students themselves live anywhere from just down the block to public housing projects, group homes and homeless shelters. Five years and counting, the Project has expanded to four Bay Area facilities-two in San Francisco, two in Oakland. The latter two programs have played a role in diffusing the territorialism and violence between different Oakland ‘hoods.

“We get everyone,” says Feinman, “from gangbangers who want to turn their life around and rap about their transformation to thugs and bling-bling kids to backpackers and nerdy beatmakers who never come out of their rooms but want to interact with other kids.” Serving mainly youth 15-26 years of age, Feinman also makes it clear he’s trying to reach out especially to women, in order to “make a safe space for them to come and create.”

On a typical day, program graduate Juan Guillermo, 21, is helping overdub Young Mic’s (Michael Arevalo) hip-hop track using ProTools. The excited MC rushes in and out of the vocal booth barking commands like a seasoned vet to his fellow student engineers: “Turn up the volume! I can’t hear myself. I gotta get this down right!” A few feet away, in front of a glowing eMac, Jabulani, 18, puts the finishing touches on a beat he just made, as fellow students practice freestyle rhymes aloud and make comments on the productions at hand. It gets sweaty and claustrophobic in the 10 x 20 foot low-ceilinged studio, but it’s the kind of controlled, directed creative flow that’s allowed graduates to produce no less than 15 CDs worth of original tracks in five years.

While the DJ Project’s output is strong, the equipment takes a beating. Oxygen8 keyboards and headphones constantly need replacing, the eMacs need upgrades and there are never enough scratch cartridges. But the kids also learn that it’s up to them to attract their own investment capitol.

“Currently we’re incubating a CD and DVD-duplication business, and we’re going to launch that in January,” says Feinman of their expanding projects. “We’re writing business plans, learning about targeted markets and competitive advantages and writing PowerPoint presentations. I’m into the whole hip-hop entrepreneurism, so I’m also looking for spin-off businesses that don’t require a lot of start-up capitol; [things] that are fairly easy to run yet are related to music.”

Bay Area artists including DJ Zeph, Azeem, DJ Quest, Zion-I, J-Boogie and Blackalicious have come through to give talks. The artists have sparked the students’ interest in learning about the business of recording careers.

Feinman envisions internships as a means of giving his graduates other insights into the music business as a whole. “I want these kids to get internships at a studio, at a label, a magazine, a radio station, so they’re exposed to other things other than just being behind the mic.” But he’s realistic about what the DJ Project can achieve in the long run. “I”m not saying we can necessarily increase their job prospects, but we connect them to something positive.”

In 2002, Swedish musicians and longtime friends Malin Dahlström, Lisen Rylander and Lisa Nordström began formulating the idea for Midaircondo, a potent blend of electronic and acoustic improvisation. The scene could have been straight from a holiday greeting card.

“We met at my house in the middle of winter,” says Dahlström, “and it was quite funny because we were actually just planning to have some kind of knitting session and make big sweaters. We were in the kitchen and I was making some kind of cake, and we just started talking about all our different bands and what we wanted to do. It suddenly occurred to us that we should be doing music together.”

While there’s nothing sappy or sentimental about Midaircondo, it was still a fitting genesis for the band. Not because of antiquated gender associations between women and domestic duties, but because the intricate, delicate beauty of Shopping for Images, the trio’s Type Records debut, could have only come from a group so close to and comfortable with one another. “I think we listen a lot to each other,” offers Dahlström, “so if someone starts playing you have to immediately relate to that.”

Performing with an array of electronic equipment and live instruments-including woodwinds, saxophones and a piano-the three musicians appear to exert a gravitational pull on each other as they play, creating ebbing and flowing currents of noise. Songs slowly coalesce, including the pastoral piano piece “Serenade,” the exuberant “Perfect Spot” and the jumpy “Could You Please Stop,” which rides an acoustic bassline and tense synthesizers. Recorded by prolific Swedish glitch electronic producer Andreas Tilliander, Shopping For Images is a testament to the band’s stated goal of finding new and unexpected ways to create and present music.

It’s also not limited to the aural realm. When performing, the group manually manipulates projected visuals live-one of the highlights of their performance this year at Barcelona’s Sonar Festival. “You have five senses and you always use them,” explains Dahlström. “So if you come to a place or venue you’re always going to experience the room, whether you think about it or not. We want to utilize that.”

At the popular NYC nightspot S.O.B.’s, a classic hip-hop moment is underway. Wu-Tang disciple Raekwon is spitting his greatest hits and misses over live, funk-laden interpretations of RZA’s soundscapes by funk/soul band El Michels Affair. With the sinewy funk stew cooking on stage, you’d swear they were sho’ nuff old school vets. But unless you’re hip to the scene, the group’s racial composition might jar you. “When Raekwon walked in [rehearsal], he was a little shocked,” recalls Truth & Soul Records co-founder/ engineer Jeff Silverman. “People assume they’re old records.” Co-founder/ saxophonist Leon “El” Michels has a similar account. “This journalist heard the [Mighty Imperials] record and thought we were a group of 60-year-old black dudes. Then he came to our show and was like, ‘I don’t know about this.'”

Comprised of a loose collective of musicians, El Michels Affair is but one of their many noms de plume-the group is the intersection of members of The Expressions, Bama & The Family, Cosmic Force, Bronx River Pkwy, The Mighty Imperials and JD & The Evil’s Dynamite Band. And like it or not, these 20-something white kids are waxing poetic all over your preconceived notions of soul. “Half of Booker T. & the MG’s was white,” cites drummer/bassist Nick Movshon. “The Atlantic Records session guys too.”

While they can’t claim Muscle Shoals lineage, they are indeed third generation throwback soul heirs. Confused? Check the family tree. In 1997, soul aficionados Phillip Lehman and Gabriel Roth formed Desco Records, pioneering the trend of reissuing obscure soul tracks. Fast forward to 2000-Roth and Lehman split to form Daptone Records (Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings) and Soul Fire (Lee Fields), respectively. In 2002, Lehman makes his exodus from the business; his pupils become beneficiaries of his musical estate.

Taking a cue from pre-blaxploitation film Putney Swope, Lehman’s pupils dub their budding branch of the tree Truth & Soul. And parallel to the film’s plot, Truth & Soul’s mission was to shake up the system. “We wanted to cover everything and work with other people, not just put out soul music,” says Silverman. “With Soul Fire, the way Philip ran things was very militant.” But with recent guests at their Williamsburg digs in the form of Masters at Work’s Kenny “Dope” Gonzales, Fatman Scoop and Lauryn Hill, it’s evident that the changing of the guard involves remixing the funky precedent.

LA-based trio Giant Panda’s name alone is peculiar enough to turn heads. Yet as random as it sounds, there is a meaning behind one of the oddest monikers in hip-hop. “It fits us literally, being black and white and from Asia,” explains MC/co-producer Newman. “And I feel like we”re bringing something that”s rare or endangered to the table.”

Like the elusive giant panda bear of China, this multiracial crew (Newman, MC/producer Chikaramanga and MC Maanumental) is somewhat of a rarity in their own territory. With sample-driven singles like “With It,” Giant Panda has helped keep the roots of hip-hop alive without falling into an old school rut. “I think it’s really easy to be a purist but yet still make forward-thinking music,” says Newman. “The fundamentals of it shouldn’t be the gimmick-they should just be means that you’re using to get to another end.”

What began as dorm room beat-making sessions between friends quickly grew into a sound cohesive enough to catch the ears of Pete Rock and Marley Marl-both of whom gave radio play to Giant Panda’s first single, “’88 Remix.” It was their move into LA (from suburban Pomona, CA, and Seattle respectively) that initially helped solidify their potential as a group. Here, they met neighbor Thes One from People Under The Stairs, who assisted the crew in recording “’88 Remix,” and who ultimately took them under his wing. “Having somebody who was already established seeing what we were trying to do and being into it gave us more confidence like, ‘Okay, we can do this,'” says Newman.

This year, under Chikara’s own Tres records, Giant Panda released their debut, Fly School Reunion. From the humorous, high BPM energy of “Racist” to the chill, melodic vibes of “With It,” this album gave fans a proper display of their slightly off-kilter brand of party-starting hip-hop. As Maanumental says of the album’s release, “It kind of validates what we’ve been doing up to this point.”

While Giant Panda has caught the attention of plenty of true school heads, they plan to extend their reach by using more accessible hooks that anyone could recognize. “Fly School Reunion is trying to reunite people that are in the know of what we”re talking about-old school stuff like the ’90s-but I want to make something that my little cousins can sing,” says Maanumental.