Best of What's Next: Dominique Young Unique

Hometown: Tampa, Fla.
Album: Domination
For Fans Of: Santigold, Rusko, Yo! Majesty

"Oh my God! This is actually pretty!” Dominique Clark, who raps under the moniker Dominique Young Unique, is at Westfield Citrus Park mall in Tampa, Fla., browsing for clothes and chatting on her cellphone. She grew up in town, and much of her work is a response to the music she heard here as a kid. “In Tampa [hip-hop], everybody talk about guns and fightin’,” she says. “So I had to kill that.”

The 19-year-old was raised in one of Tampa’s many housing projects, some of which are engaged in intense, bloody feuds. “I fought a lot [growing up],” she says. “But I ain’t never shoot at nobody or was shootin’. I fought, like, fist-fight.” She started rapping at age 11, and at 15 she met Shunda K, then a member of Tampa rap duo Yo! Majesty, who introduced Clark to her current label and producer. Despite the “I ain’t talkin’ bout no guns,” line in her 2009 single “Music Time,” her lyrics trade on the violence she witnessed earlier in life; on “War Talk,” her high-pitched voice yelps: “War talk! War talk! War talk! War talk! / All you motherfuckers just take a walk, walk / Get up on my block and you’ll feel this Glock!”

But there’s no way the singles that make up her June-released Domination mixtape could be construed as gangsta rap. Instead of trap-rap’s steadily pounding 808 drum machines, Clark’s beats are frantic, skittering from handclaps to tinny club pulses to dubsteppy wobble. Usually, the percussion and wall-of-sound synths give way to completely new rhythms several times throughout each track. Likewise, her influences are as diverse as Trina, Cyndi Lauper and fellow up-and-comer Nicki Minaj. “I just want to do it, like, fun and catchy,” Clark says. “Like people can dance to it, but they also understand where I’m coming from.”