Glamorous Touch
“I can do my own thing!” exults Dominique Young Unique on her new mixtape. Perhaps — but she’s not doing it yet. The Tampa rapper is salty-tongued and filthy-minded (see last year’s awesome salvo, “Show My Ass”), with a high, sharp voice that cuts through the electro-fied pep of songs like “Follow the Leader” and the Justin Bieber-sampling “My Turning.” But Young Unique is distractingly in debt to her influences. Her freak-child shtick is borrowed from Missy Elliott and Nicki Minaj; her singsong refrains are lifted from M.I.A.; on the auto-tune-swathed “My Success,” her love for Lil Wayne is obvious. Sometimes, her rhymes have a refreshingly punchy ring of truth. (“We party like white girls on some days/And after that, workin’ hard, yeah, gettin’ paid.”) But, for now, Unique is a misnomer.
Listen to Glamorous Touch: