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one element of this is easy to explain (if irritating to endure): music is here understood as entertainment, so it comes with no particular obligation to have the faintest idea what you are talking about....and folk use their consumption patterns to differentiate themselves from others.
so much of what is complained about in the op can be explained by just adding the two claims together.
easiest way to disabuse yourself of the illusion that other forms of music (that you do not do yourself) are easy is to try to do them. think writing pop songs is easy? try it. it's not easy. you think writing a hook is easy? try it.
i personally dislike bluegrass intensely, mostly because my brother is a banjo player and i grew up hearing him practice (that'll do it for anyone, no matter the style--he feels the same way about what i do, i am sure)--but it does not follow that because i dislike the form that i do not respect the musicianship that is required to play it--again, try it yourself if you want to get a sense of the ways in which it requires considerable attention to craft to play well.
i am a pianist and spend alot of time working with the instrument--but i listen to all kinds of stuff that has nothing to do with either my instrument or the sort of things i like to do or hear that involve it. like hip hop: i like turntablists. it is easy peasy to make noise with a couple of 1200s and a fader: but it is really not easy to do anything interesting. the level of skill involved in some of the battle crews is staggering. listen to q-bert sometime. listen to the x-ecutioners. dj craze or dj/rupture. try and do even a fraction of what these folk can manage with 2 or 3 turntables.
or try to rhyme and not look like an ass doing so.
flow is not easy.
at the production level, even if alot of the production in hip hop is technically quite simple to put together, the ear that is required to do it well is not easy to acquire. much of production is about being able to listen. listening is a skill.
you get the same kind of goofball responses to alot of contemporary art: folk walk into a gallery, see an installation and say "i could have done that"...but of course, they didn't do that, and they won't do that. generally, this is little more than a substitution of groundless smugness for engagement. it happens all the time. that is why it makes little sense to take seriously what an audience says to you about a gig . whether its positive or negative, you are still entertainment and because you're entertainment, there needs be nothing behind what anyone says about the experience. in general, you smile, say
"thanks" and move toward the bar.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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