Tim Vocals, an R&B singer from Harlem, has emerged as an internet sensation with a novel shtick: crooning gritty, profane tales of thug life and drug-peddling in a lilting, feather-light soul man’s tenor. His debut mixtape collects a dozen of Vocals' "goon-mixes," with beats repurposed from hip-hop and R&B hits past and present. Thus Ne-Yo's "Sexy Love" becomes the blood-soaked "Bust My Guns" and Drake's noirish "Marvin’s Room" is transformed into "Bags of the Sour," a coke-dealer’s tale of paranoia and retribution: "These bitch niggas might know my last name/Snitch the police that I’m moving cocaine." In other hands, the gimmick could grow tried, but Vocals is an arresting singer, and he knows how to ring the maximum possible irony from his clash of sweet and sour. "Every night I be livin' that trap life," he coos. The tune? Michael Jackson's "Human Nature."

Listen to "Bags of the Sour":

“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."