by Patrick Pilch (@pratprilch)
In 2019, Chicago hip hop legend Sharkula opened his Hausu Mountain debut with a frank self proclamation: “We’re just some fucked up chemists/doing fucked up good things for you/in your community/we say hello to you.” Brian Wharton (aka Sharkula) speaks on behalf of himself and Hausu cofounder Max Allison, two colorful characters linked in left-field unison. The west side’s bearded bard connects again with Allison’s ever-glitched Mukqs moniker for Take Caution On The Beach, the most lurid and fruitful Sharkula collaboration to date. Wharton’s meandering verses wallow and wedge into Allison’s rhythmic nooks and cornerless crannies, the producer’s fluid beats mirroring the MC’s signature, hot-off-the-cuff delivery.
Never has Sharkula sounded so in sync with a record’s backing tracks. Balancing boom-bap beats with glitching tones and textures, Mukqs’ verse-chorus-verse format supplies the backbone for each track’s mutating top layer, making for some real “chicken or the egg” type beats. Opener “Chicago Bear Claw Jaws” sets the scene: “I disappear/Here I am/Boo boo boo boo,” Sharkula quips, echoed by a playful synth line, the moment serving as an early preview of the countless, hyper-detailed surprises to come.
Wharton’s free verse rhymes hit like the beginning of a dream, fractal connections the mind makes in hypnagogia. The rapper strings unlikely phrases into overarching, abstracted, sleepy-eyed logic. Sharkula’s poetic fragments are self-referential, both on standalone tracks and over the course of the record. Take “Sharkula Flow Pro,” where the rapper briefly references a wrestling championship at the mention of the word “belt,” before rattling off a series of questions about shampoo products, aging puppies and gigs in Boulder, Colorado. The line feels solely associative until a few lines later when Sharkula advises, “Don’t go to the fish market or the supermarket and talk down on the general manager/Notice you might be an amateur wrestler/You want to wrastle with the tabasco sauce in aisle three?/Or do you want to get pulled out by the deputy?”
There are plenty of these associative moments across Take Caution on the Beach, with Sharkula taking advantage of the previously quoted string-of-inquiries rapping format, most notably on “Do You Like Country Music?” and “I Paint Like a Painter.” However, one of the most impressive elements of Take Caution on the Beach is Sharkula’s recording process. Every track on the record was recorded as a single, continuous vocal take. Sharkula’s free-association potpourri reads like a masterful clustering session that expertly manages to include Wharton’s love of double-headers, roller-skates, Care Bears and Sarah Lee.
Over the course of Take Caution on the Beach, the pandemic’s ugly head rears itself in Sharkula’s verses, but what’s so excellent about this project (like most Hausu Mountain releases) is its overt positivity. These days there are a lot of people who are sad or mad or maybe they’re just tired. So when I pass them on Milwaukee Avenue I smile and say “hi” because I cannot stop the spread of COVID or disinformation and I cannot cure cancer or solve world hunger or disarm the nukes or redistribute the wealth. But damn, can I say “hi” and smile. Take Caution on the Beach feels like an exercise in mindfulness, acknowledging the shitty shit but focusing on the good shit like cutting one’s ego or eating or staying away from negative people. Sharkula and Mukqs are persistent beacons of light in the face of overwhelming adversity, double the beneficial proof of mind over matter.