Definitely agree with this, and wanted to share some personal thoughts on why I think this is, thread: https://twitter.com/CineMasai_/status/1386743557101428742

A huge glaring reason for this is the lack of respect for Black music. There’s this notion (especially within music institutions), that hip-hop is easy to play and that if you can play what they call jazz, then you can basically play any form of Black music.

Musicians practice hours a day for years to perform Chopin, Beethoven, Bach, but think by playing hip hop, they don’t have to put in the same level of care and effort. People think playing hip hop is an excuse to play sloppy. They think that because they have musical training,

their shit will be inherently better because it's real instruments. The whole notion of what is "serious" music is elitist and racist.

Another problem I see in live rap situations, and music in general, is essentialism, where we observe a thing and define it as the sum of a set of essential characteristics. For example, drummers are taught to play a “funk”/“hip hop”/“samba” beat.

Guitarists/pianists are taught to play specific chord shapes or just how to read notes from a sheet. While these are good ways to get started, we often leave our understanding at that, reducing musical ideas to static, unchanging definite forms, rather than dynamic,

always changing, historical, conversational. Ex: Walking bass + swing on the ride cymbal + ii V I chords + the real book = jazz ; Ex: Back beat + minor 9th chords + rapper = hip hop.

Lastly, a lack of sensuality. I'm not alluding to just sex, but as Baldwin describes it in The Fire Next Time. "To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the

breaking of bread." He's talking about white Americans here, but I think non-white people can fall into this as well. Alot of musicians are detached from the moment they're in, the music, their band mates.

I do think there's lots of great examples of live bands playing this music well, but theres a lot of really shit bands getting highlighted because of the novelty of "live hip hop".

Also wanna add that as a musician, I don't think I'm above any of these criticisms. In my own development as a musician and artist these are just some things I've been learning/unlearning about music and myself.