by iSpit
R. Kelly. Bobby Brown. Ray J. Estelle. Sisqo. Russell Simmons. Shaggy. Damon Dash. M.I.A. Santigold. Kelis. T-Pain. Akon. All of these people have two things in common: 1) At one point, they were referred to by the New York Post as “rappers,” and 2) None of them are. You see how some of these might confuse people: how the sing-songy styles of M.I.A. and Akon could be mistaken as rapping for the uninitiated and hard-of-hearing, old white people who write the Post. T-Pain is a “rappa ternt sanga,” so that explains that. Bobby Brown has rapped (I mean, has a couplet finer than “Too hot to handle, too cold to hold / They called the Ghostbusters in they’re in control” since been spat?), Kelis, R. Kelly and Santigold have kind of, as well, I guess. Russell and Damon have worked around rap, so I guess they’re rappers by association?
The fact of the matter is that even if the case can be made that a few of these people could possibly write “rapper” on their resume, a more accurate title could be applied to any of them. (Someone like Kid Rock apparently is one of the few of the multi-hyphenate elite. Guess why!) I do not know for sure why they are called “rappers,” but I can make a few guesses. The Post still fetishizes rappers as the bad boys of the entertainment industry. The vast majority of its hip-hop coverage — I’d say just from the informal survey that I took to find the above examples of faulty labeling, 80 percent of it involves the rappers involved in some sort of crime. As silly as it is, the word “rapper,” still has sensationalistic value at the Post that “R&B star” or “dancehall artist” or “mogul,” just doesn’t. (Shit, they called Barbie a rapper, even though she was actually, Rappin’ and Rockin‘.) Also, these people who have no idea what they’re talking about regarding pop culture, may hear about a (usually male) black recording artist and just assume that he is a rapper. I’m not saying that these people are racist (although, if they work for the Post, I’m not saying they’re not racist, either), but I am saying they’re lazy, ignorant and prone to stereotyping. That’s all!
The reason that I bring this up is that in Tuesday’s paper there was an item labeling Ne-Yo a rapper, which is the most egregious error of this sort yet. I think I’ve rapped more than Ne-Yo has. He’s a fucking crooner, you know? A singing, songwriting crooner. (I discovered through my research that this isn’t even the first time the Post has done that.) Seriously, Post, who’s next? Stevie Wonder? Miles Davis? Lenny Kravitz is part-black, so he must be part-rapper, too, right? And look, I understand factual errors. I make them often. I understand meaning one thing and typing another. But I don’t understand working at a national media outlet and just assuming in the place of fact-checking. That’s nonsense.
It’s not just the Post that does this, of course. Come, let’s laugh at the mistakes of what we can presume are stupid white people:
The L.A. Times is almost as bad as the Post, having referred to Marques Houston, John fucking Legend and Chris Brown as rappers.
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