Gabriel C. Benn (born December 29, 1974), better known as Asheru, is an American rapper, educator, and youth activist.

As a youth, Asheru's musical influences were a wide range of hip hop artists as well as Soul, R&B, and Pop from the 1970s and 1980s that his mother used to play.

Asheru has performed throughout Europe, Canada, the US and Japan, both solo and with Unspoken Heard, as well as collaborating on projects with artists such as Pete Rock and DJ Jazzy Jeff.

He also works with schools and juvenile detention centers to promote literacy as an intervention against youth violence, crime, unemployment, and incarceration.

[3] In 2005, Asheru co-founded Educational Lyrics, a publishing company that produces cross-curricular teaching materials, such as the Hip-Hop Educational Literacy Program (HELP), a series of supplemental reading workbooks that use hip-hop lyrics to teach critical analysis and multicultural relevance to students of all reading levels.