By night, Asheru. By day, Mr. Benn. A hip-hop artist transforms education.

Nearly an hour after the show was supposed to begin, the Unspoken Heard takes the stage at BloomBars. But in the crowd of 40 or so, no one seems to mind. True heads understand that you’ve got to wait for good hip-hop.

The group’s founding members, Asheru (Gabriel Benn) and Blue Black (Robert Jackson) joke they might have to ante up money for the art bar’s curse jar. Both culturally and percussively, sometimes the music just calls for a good expletive.

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(Matt McClain/FOR THE WASHINGTON POST) - Gabriel Benn is the Director of Arts Integration at the Arts and Technology Academy at Ballou Senior High School. Benn performs as a musical artist under the name of Asheru.

Benn checks the iPad rotation, their guitarist Munier Nazeer starts to play, and as the duo breaks into their “BBoy” rhyme, heads nod in the half light of the Washington club.

You a true thug?

C’mon man, you get a group hug

We embrace you, but we ain’t scared to face you . . .

On and on, the emcees’ flow is the product of chemistry and long years — 10 years since their milestone album, “Soon Come,” a classic in independent hip-hop circles. They pause at times to narrate the journey they have taken from the late ’90s U Street underground hip-hop scene. “It’s a beautiful night,” says Benn, a D.C. native. “It’s kind of like a family reunion.”

In the decade since the album was released, Benn has toured Europe and rocked crowds in South Africa as part of a BloomBars artist exchange program. He wrote the theme song for “The Boondocks,” on the Cartoon Network and won a Peabody Award. He’s married and has three kids. He has a master’s degree in education.

He is, in short, a hip-hop renaissance man.

He wades his 6 feet 3 inches into the crowd as he rhymes so they can celebrate “Soon Come.” But come Monday, Asheru will be Mr. Benn — in a decidedly different place.

Shortly before 2 o’clock, Mr. Benn helps to clear the hallway at Ballou Senior High School in Southeast. In September, he became director of arts integration at the school’s Arts and Tech Academy, formerly the Transition Academy for emotionally disturbed and learning disabled students.

He waves his hands to direct the flow, and in a deep, theatrical voice, urges students to get to class. He closes the heavy metal door to his office, but school noises still filter through. Laughter. Running. A kid wanting attention she doesn’t know how to ask for lies out in the the floor, throwing a tantrum.

These kids “need a special teacher who can reach them,” Benn says. “Instead of putting the stigma on students, I try to put the onus on the teachers.” He’s been an educator and administrator in D.C. public schools off and on for 13 years. It’s part of his hip-hop citizenship. It’s how his Guerilla Arts Movement — which brings local artists into District classrooms — got started.

“There are so many cats from the D.C. hip-hop and urban arts scene in the schools now,” says Rhome Anderson, DJ “Stylus.” He met Benn doing his University of Maryland “Soul Controllers” radio program in the mid-’90s and later toured with the Unspoken Heard. “What happens when the children of the golden age of hip-hop grow up?” Anderson says. “They become educators.”

Benn’s divorced parents stressed education. He attended public and private schools in the District, and spent his middle school years in his father’s native Barbados. He returned to D.C., entered Mackin Catholic High School as a 12-year-old, and, at 16, was a freshman at the University of Virginia. Bad grades brought him home, and he became an editorial assistant at the Smithsonian’s African American museum project, but he returned to U-Va. and even after taking a year off, still graduated with his class.