Dr. Rawls is not only a scholar and an educator, but he is also a practitioner of Hip-Hop. Dr. Rawls contributed production on the album Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star, which was critically acclaimed as one of the best albums of 1998 and was a major force in the late-1990s underground Hip-Hop explosion. Dr. Rawls has also produced and DJ’ed for artists such as the Beastie Boys, Ghostface of WuTang Clan, Capital Steez (Pro Era), Slum Village, Souls of Mischief, 9th Wonder, and Us3. Dr. Rawls is also a featured speaker at universities around the country. Drawing on his nearly two decades of K-12 teaching experience, in 2019, Dr. Rawls, along with his co-author, John Robinson, released his first book entitled Youth Culture Power: A #HipHopEd Guide to Building Teacher-Student Relationships and Increasing Student Engagement.

As an Associate Professor of Instruction at The Patton College of Education at Ohio University, Dr. Rawls is now co-writing the first Hip-Hop Based Education program in a College of Education in the United States (H.O.P.E. Program). The program is a series of four courses rooted in Hip-Hop Based Education using both Culturally Relevant and Relational Pedagogy. Dr. Rawls is also coordinator of the Brothers R.I.S.E. program at Ohio University.