Here's a group of 12 artists. All of them primarily perform with melodic, precisely pitched vocals. Yet when you Google them, half of them are described as rappers while the other half are considered singers. Any wild guesses as to why that might be?

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We often think of rapping as rhythmic speech, but in reality it's more than that. Here's Chance the Rapper. Is this rapping or singing to you? Can it be both? Chance the RAPPER's name seems to suggest so. Either way, it's pretty melodic, and has a range of more than an octave.

Compare that with Katy Perry here. Less pitch variation, pretty repetitive. Probably closer to our traditional definition of rap than the CTR example above, but nobody would call this rapping. Why? Well, for starters, because Katy Perry is white.

If you need more convincing that race, not technique, often shapes our perception of genre, here's the 2019 Grammy winner for Best Rap Song. For what reasons, other than Drake being Black, would we consider this to be rapping instead of singing?

Or, take "Old Town Road." Every syllable is purposefully-pitched and tuned in production, yet it was the AMA's "Favorite Rap Song" of 2019, and won the BET hip-hop award for best hip-hop single.

Moral of the story: When it comes to our collective ideas of genre and vocal techniques, race matters way more than some people realize.

Also, the idea of singing and rapping being mutually exclusive is becoming obsolete.