Young Chop and Drumma Boy (via)In retrospect, the highlight of Tuesday night's Red Bull Music Academy’s “Drum Majors” event came early in the night, during Bangladesh’s set. He tried to transition from Tom Lehrer’s “The Old Dope Peddler” to 2 Chainz’s “Dope Peddler,” to show how he had flipped the former to make the beat for the latter. What actually happened was that his laptop ran out of power at the exact moment he tried to drop “Dope Peddler.” It was one gaffe among many last night, but at least it was executed with perfect comedic timing.“Drum Majors” was supposed to be an all-star line-up of hip-hop producers “exclusively reinterpret[ing] their biggest tracks live onstage.” What it actually was was an all-star line-up of hip-hop producers doing DJ sets of wildly varying quality, mostly of their own stuff. That was fine for Young Chop and DJ Mustard. Chop’s drill sound is running rap right now and his fat-dude charisma made his whole set fun, even if he was just yelling over his own tracks while his dude cued them up. (Lil Durk lurked in the background but we didn’t get a live “Dis Ain’t What They Want”). DJ Mustard has a deep catalog and is an actual DJ; his set was great. Mannie Fresh closed out the night but I was really drunk and dipped midway through his set; what I saw was way better than his EDM-filled debacle at Santos a couple months ago though.Everyone else was pretty much terrible though. Drumma Boy rapped Yo Gotti, Young Jeezy and others’ lyrics from his own productions, spun by a DJ who seemed like he’d rather have been elsewhere. Bangladesh fumbled his way through sound problems (aside from his dying laptop) and loading up the wrong versions of songs, but also told us that his yellow sampler inspired Gucci Mane to write “Lemonade”. J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League blew through a tedious set of soporific Maybach Music album cuts, but at least they had a live sax player. Drake cohort Boi 1-da cleared the room with impressive speed. Nobody really knew who he was and so nobody wanted to hear him play his own shit. The back bar was packed and not just because Heat-Pacers went into OT.J.U.S.T.I.C.E. League also fucked up a few times and followed it up with, “My bad, he’s a producer not a DJ.” That just begs the question: why is he DJing then? Boi 1-da tweeted that his set last night was his first time DJing in front of a crowd. Who wants to see anyone fumble through that shit? It’s disrespectful to the crowd and to RBMA to show up and wing it. This is just a friendly reminder that DJing is hard and “DJ sets” are a waste of your entertainment dollar. This goes for rap producers, rock bands, rappers, models, actors, politicians and other celebrities. If you’re not sure why they’re DJing, check yourself before you pay to see them DJ.Rap writers excluded, Skinny Friedman will be DJing at Arrow Bar in the East Village on Saturday night. He's on Twitter - @skinny412