EDITORIAL REVIEWS
Underground hip-hop wild card Sharkula has carved himself into the grain of the Chicago underground through 20 years of determined grinding. He records his free-associative verses over a wide spectrum of scene-sourced beats and has built a catalog of over 40 individual albums that he wraps in his own distinctive hand-drawn packaging. Sharkula approaches the spontaneous construction of a verse from the perspective of an improviser, and recorded every track that appears on Take Caution on the Beach as a single unbroken vocal take. HausMo co-founder Mukqs's production keeps one foot in the beat architectures and regimented structures of boom-bap hip hop, while continuing his exploration of the potential of 16-bit video game music. Although the specter of the COVID-19 pandemic rears its head in moments of Sharkula's freestyle verses his overall message remains grounded in positivity, shining a light to combat any existential darkness that bears down on us.