Jamaica Plain native Paul Willis was told to pick one career path—a hip hop artist or an educator: “‘Get your degree, but keep the two worlds separate,’” as he recalls.

Disregarding this advice, Willis has spent his 20-year career merging his interests in hip hop and working with youth. As an educator, he’s currently the director of programming at Beat the Odds, a non-profit that focuses on music and arts education for students from low-income backgrounds. And as a musician, he’s released 11 albums and countless mixtapes.

His latest project, “Hip Hop Leadership,” serves as the culmination of his career up to this point. It will include an album, a book, and a curriculum: the book focuses on integrating hip hop pedagogy in the classroom, a style of teaching that uses the genre to reinforce ideas, and the curriculum includes a lesson structure for teachers to use.

“This is a project that nobody has seen before. It’s hip hop with an educational component, and it exists in the leadership development world next to Malcolm Gladwell and Jim Collins,” Willis said in an interview with The Beacon. “There’s something in there for everybody—my audience demographic has always been five to 95 years old.”

A lot of educators have core memories of teachers who inspired them to pursue education. Willis recalls being in sixth grade when his sister’s then-husband taught him to rap in his Honda Civic—he played beats for Willis and showed him how to count bars. But the most important thing he took away was the value of authenticity, which he would carry to his teaching today.

“His key lesson was, ‘Just be yourself. Don’t rap about street stuff if you’re not a street dude,’” Willis said. “‘You love books, you love riding your bike, you love basketball. Just be you, because there’s not enough of that.’”

While attending the College of the Holy Cross, he was tutoring at a middle school in Worcester and coaching a high school basketball team. He helped establish a mentoring program between the Worcester high school team and the Division I basketball team at Holy Cross, which allowed the high school players to practice and do homework with the college athletes.

However, he only began to see himself as an educator after taking education classes at college. He realized what he was doing with his music was, ultimately, teaching—his lyrics focused on social justice issues and community action, and he often performed at colleges, high schools, and community spaces. After graduating, he decided he wanted to pursue teaching alongside being an artist.

“It really showed me that if I wanted to play a role in changing the system, in improving educational opportunities for kids from backgrounds like mine, I had to show up every day doing the work,” Willis said. “It’s all done in partnership, it’s not done in silos. Most of my days are spent being out in the community, showing up at events, and meeting people.”

“Hip Hop Leadership” is a local effort. The album will include features from Massachusetts artists—many of whom are involved with volunteer or community work—including Lawrence-based singer Laura Cabrera, Worcester-based poet BrujaTheVillain, Boston-based rapper Red Shaydez, and others. Additionally, the opening track includes three of Willis’s students from Beat the Odds.

“The advice of keeping the worlds separate actually did not make sense in my career path,” Willis said. “Those worlds kept coming closer and closer together, where I’m now a full-time artist that supports young folks. And this new project is an album, book, and curriculum: it’s a new ABCs of rap.”

Today, as an educator with Beat the Odds, he helps students from marginalized backgrounds express themselves through art. But with “Hip Hop Leadership,” he hopes to expand his teaching to classrooms across the country. Willis encourages educators to use his curriculum for everything from elementary school classes to college courses.

Willis was able to test a condensed version of the curriculum with a class of eighth graders at Conservatory Lab Charter School, a music and performing arts school in Dorchester. He believes the lessons demonstrated the value of hip hop as a teaching tool.

“Hearing how they could recognize those values within themselves or within their families, but couldn’t see those values in their community, was really eye-opening,” Willis said. “It helped me understand that these values exist, but people don’t have the language around it.”

“Hip Hop Leadership” is set to release in April.