Chris Brown is not a rapper. Though he does rap sometimes, he is primarily a singer, and should be identified as such in the same way that Charles Manson should be identified as a cult leader/criminal and not a musician/dude with sweet moves, and that Bugs Bunny should be identified as a talking rabbit and not a drag queen. But people continue to write "rapper Chris Brown..." which seems assumptive to the point of being oh, hmmm, what's the word? Oh yeah, racist!

In today's New York Times story about Suge Knight getting shot by Lori Holcomb-Holland, Chris Brown was once again identified as a rapper. (His main role last night was actually party host, but see how he hangs out with gangster types who shoot people and get shot by people? Rapper.) The Times has since corrected this story:

An earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Chris Brown. He is a singer, not a rapper.

The last time we called the Times out for calling singers "rappers" (a phenomenon that stretches way, way beyond Chris Brown, though that story was about him, too), they issued this much longer correction:

Because of an editing error, the Hashtag Nation column on Nov. 29, about Chris Brown's Twitter account, described him incorrectly. While he does occasionally rap, he is considered foremost a singer. This correction was delayed because an editor did not follow through on the complaint.

An earlier version of a picture caption with this article repeated the error.

Will they ever learn?

Stop calling black singers "rappers" already.

[Image via Getty]

[H/T @SarahGowrie]