Teodros' music often features socially conscious themes, and he was a catalyst in the surge of dynamic underground rap acts from the Pacific Northwest during the first decade of the 2000s.

[3] Teodros's relationship with hip hop culture began at a young age within the South Seattle neighborhood of Beacon Hill.

The former breakdancer, graffiti writer and closet-emcee finally began to take his career path seriously at age 16, using hip hop to both understand and explain his world.

[13] In the fall of 2009, after being deported from the London-Heathrow Airport and having to cancel a European tour, Teodros found himself in a Brooklyn, New York recording studio with Lovework producer Amos Miller.

[19] Colored People's Time Machine was recorded in Seattle and Brooklyn and is a multi-lingual, multi-genre album that featured vocal, instrumental, and production collaborations with 20 different artists.

On it, he explored themes of love (Goodnight, a brief interlude on a long-distance relationship), cultural identity (Blossoms of Fire), personal identity (Alien Native, a biographical tale), the concept of home (Diaspora and Beit), loss (Ella Mable Bright, a tribute to his grandmother featuring Meklit Hadero), music (Colored People’s Time Machine, and Sun and Breeze, also featuring Meklit Hadero and Amos Miller), and the music industry (You A Star, on which he warns about the pitfalls of the industry and the danger of buying into the illusion of stardom).

[20] Other guests on the album include Mexico City's Bocafloja, Los Angeles emcee SKIM, and Palestinian wordsmith Sabreena Da Witch.

[22] Earthbound's story, as described in liner notes by award-winning science fiction author Nnedi Okorafor, casts CopperWire members as characters that journey to Earth in the year 2089 to learn what it means to be human.

They include mad scientist Scholar Black (Burntface), alien-human hybrid Getazia (Gabriel Teodros) and interstellar telepath Ko Ai (Meklit Hadero).

[24] The album also uses sonified light curves (that is the sound of stars, processed through Fourier analysis into frequencies that can be heard by humans) courtesy of SETI Institute researcher and NASA Kepler Labs analyst Jon Jenkins.

[26] On October 28, 2014, Teodros released the album Evidence of Things Not Seen with Auckland, New Zealand–based producer SoulChef, and featured vocals from Jonathan Emile, Shakiah and Sarah MK.

The album's featured guests included Meklit Hadero, Khingz, Nikkita Oliver, Essam, Shakiah, Mikaela Romero, Otieno Terry and it was entirely produced by Moka Only.

The albums themes range from a tragic fire that he and his spouse, Ijeoma Oluo, had to flee from in September 2020, to longtime friends that have passed away, and a shifting landscape wracked by the pandemic, wars, and the climate catastrophe.

[40] Teodros performed at the Bumbershoot Festival in Seattle, Washington in 2006 (with Abyssinian Creole), 2007 (as a solo artist, and with Good Medicine), and in 2010 (with Air 2 A Bird).

[44] Teodros also performed at the Trinity International Hip Hop Festival in Hartford, Connecticut in 2007 (as a solo artist),[45] and in 2008 (as a part of Abyssinian Creole).

He recorded an album in Washington, DC inspired by the experience,[49] that was released in May 2014[50] Teodros has also performed in the United States alongside the likes of Lupe Fiasco,[51] Black Star,[52] K'naan,[19] Zap Mama, Fishbone, KRS-One and The Coup.

[57][58] In 2015, Teodros wrote curriculum, taught and helped launch The Residency, a summer program focused on youth development through hip-hop, in partnership with the Museum of Pop Culture, Arts Corps, and Macklemore & Ryan Lewis.

In 2023, Teodros co-taught an interdisciplinary course in the University of Washington's Honors program called "Lovework: an unfinished syllabus", named for his 2007 LP and inspired by the work of bell hooks.