“A fun game is spotting the random African-American male crooner who gets tagged as a ‘rapper’ by any number of clueless newspapers or magazines. There’s an implicit value judgment made when, say, Ne-Yo receives the ‘rapper’ label: This stuff, with it’s futuristic synths and bold drums and sexually explicit lyrics, is not R&B (a.k.a., love songs for grown-ass men and women). Even more common is the act of referring to a troubled R&B singer as a ‘rapper.’ Google ’rapper R. Kelly‘ and see what comes up. Chris Brown was suddenly a ‘rapper’ around the time he viciously assaulted Rihanna and, once again, when he threw a chair at a window after he was asked about Rihanna in an interview with journalistic heavy-hitters Good Morning America.

Brown, ever the opportunistic shitbag in his post-Rihanna career, has welcomed and even exploited the rapper tag. It’s a minor but not insignificant part of why he’s been able to make such a bold comeback. His song “Deuces” received an epic rap remix, and America’s favorite young domestic abuser even rhymes alongside Busta Rhymes andLil Wayne on America’s current No. 1 R&B/Hip-Hop single “Look At Me Now.” By rapping a bit, even dying his hair blonde, or possibly leaking that nude photo of himself, Brown conveys some vague sense of danger and suggests a hip-hop reinvention that distracts from, or at least recasts, his controversy: No longer was he the sweet young R&B singer who beat up Rihanna, he was now the impervious rapperwho beat up Rihanna. Ultimately, Brown copped-out on the rapper schtick. F.A.M.E. (which stands for ‘Forgiving All My Enemies’) is essentially an R&B album full of gross horny crooner tracks and Euro-trashy party pumpers. Still, this is a pretty fascinating phenomenon: The girlfriend-beating R&B loverman dabbles in hip-hop to improve his public image.”