"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.

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“Is It True”

As the British Invasion reached its peak in 1964, Brenda Lee went from Nashville to London to record one of her hardest-rocking hits, her perky vocal backed by a stuttering, squalling guitar. That guitar was played by session musician Jimmy Page, yet to skyrocket to fame with first the Yardbirds and then Led Zeppelin. "She said to me, 'I've come here to make a record with the British sound,'" remembered producer Mickie Most. "She felt she wouldn't get the same sound in Nashville because they're only just catching up on the British beat group sound of about six months ago."