Dominique Young Unique - My Turning
Dominique Young Unique - Immaculate

It’s so obvious to compare Dominique Young Unique to Rye Rye. We might as well just throw them into the same folder of the grand blogosphere filing cabinet! We’ll call it “female rappers with perpetually youthful voices, spitting their rhymes over high energy tracks”! OMG, you guys! It’s like they’re practically the same person… Except not at fucking all.

Whereas Rye Rye will never be able to escape her Baltimore club roots, Dominique has a similar relationship to Florida and the general scope of southern hip-hop. She bridges the line between ol’ school Miami-bass references like Anquette and modern-day artists like Trina*. Throw in the aggression of 1990s No Limit scene-stealer Mia X, along with a sincere wackiness that current Cash Money scene-stealer Nicki Minaj (who’s not actually southern at all) strives so hard to accomplish.

Even then, you’re still only skimming the surface. Listening to Ms. Unique on The Go! Team‘s “Voice Yr Choice” or “Apollo Throwdown”, you can’t really hear any of the aforementioned influences or comparisons. Her ultimate destiny depends on her next move. If she’s able to carve out a niche that lives up to her name, she has potential to rule this game. It’s not entirely clear how samples of Justin Bieber‘s “Baby” will fit into all of this. But, hey, at least it’s better than this… Kidding, kidding! Sort of. But not really at all.

“My Turning” and “Immaculate” both appear on Dominique’s latest mixtape Glamorous Touch. Stream it and download the whole thing over here.

* Both Anquette and Trina hail from Miami, while Dominique is from Tampa. Not exactly sure why this qualifies for a super-important footnote, but it seemed fair to point it out for accuracy’s sake.