Patriot Act: “Hip Hop & Streaming” Episode Recap & Review

A Global Game-Changer

With over a billion people using YouTube, 47% of people use the video sharing site to stream music. What started during house parties in the Bronx as a way of expressing societal issues has grown from strength to strength over the decades to overtake Rock as the most dominant music genre today. It’s quite the impressive feat too and given the ever-changing landscape of the music scene, is something certainly worth exploring further.

Thankfully Hasan Minhaj is here, blending together this growing trend of streaming platforms with one of his favourite topics, Hip Hop. Through fresh, enthused wit and a globe-spanning set of news reports, Hasan sheds light on the influence Hip Hop has had over the world, including oppression in Thailand, Russia’s intent on utilizing Hip Hop to work for the government and the growing trend of platforms like SoundCloud to showcase new artists.

Educational, interesting and topical, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed watching Patriot Act over the weeks but this episode in particular really does well to bring flair and humour to a fascinating subject. Some of the jokes are really well written too and Hasan delivers them with his usual intense eye contact (which makes up 6% of his personality as we’re told early on).

Seeing the sheer power Hip Hop has had over the world makes this quite an eye-opening episode and one I’d certainly recommend to any music fan. The comedy is on-point for the majority of the episode too, which is something I’ve mentioned before in terms of its American-centric jibes. The various archival news footage does well to reinforce a positive viewpoint toward a genre that’s long been vilified by the very same media machine too.

The most interesting take away I found from this was around the length of tracks and understanding why hip hop artists opt for shorter tracks on albums. It’s something I never really thought about before and given my unashamed love for all things electronica (where the tracks regularly hit upwards of 6-8 minutes), it certainly adds some clarity around why artists do this.

Patriot Act continues to surprise and deliver the goods week in, week out. This week’s episode may not have the same hard hitting facts or shock factor last week’s episode on Civil Rights had but it does do well to showcase a more educational perspective on an important topic. Love it or hate it, there’s no denying the influence Hip hop has had on the world and seeing this merged with the power of streaming platforms poses a very intriguing question going forward – what next for the music scene?