JO-FIXXX-IT - BROKEN

There's this incredible hip-hop video show on MTV 2 called Sucka Free Sunday. What makes it so incredible is the fact that it shows me nothing but "suckas"! This show eats up hours worth of airwaves, cramming more bad hip-hop through people's eye sockets than men shoved phallus down Linda Lovelace's gullet. Give this Trinitron bile more than two seconds of your attention, and you'll be trapped like a deer in headlights. And, for what seems like eons, you'll get to watch the rap genre be corn-holed repeatedly by 50 Cent, P. Diddy, Ludacris, Nelly, and many, many more. It is, by far, the biggest art and entertainment identity gang-rape this side of the Pacific. Then again, I wouldn't expect anything less from MTV.
Luckily, when I wipe the hip-pop jizz from my ears and turn off the television, I remember that that shit exists to keep the masses occupied while the rest of us sit back and enjoy the quality stuff. Like Broken, the new solo album from Jo-Fixxx-It. The Chicago-based Jo is everything that radio rap shit isn't: authentic. Fixxx-It leaves the clichés at the door, and charges ahead through 21 tracks of cartoon/Sesame Street samples, operatic madness, and rhymes charged with honest, fierce emotion. The chunky beats are layered with wholesome cuts, reminiscent of DJ Faust and Shortee's work. And Jo's lyricism runs so deep it put her butt to sleep, oozing over with razor-sharp candor akin to the piercing rhymes of Slug (Atmosphere). Beyond Jo-Fixxx-It, Broken is chock full of appearances by other figures in the Chicago hip-hop scene. The cool thing about rap music like this is that these guys aren't just talking about their rented yacht, or taking their favorite Led Zeppelin single and rapping over it. These people aren't regurgitating. They're reinventing,.. sneaking up alongside all this popular crap and making sure they have their say in what's really happening next.
GET BROKEN HERE.