What YoungVicious said...! Almost any rapper comin up in the game these days knows how much of an ICON Jay-Z is, and how much skill he truly posesses...
"Said she loved my necklace...started relaxin../
Now thats what the fuck i call a chain reaction!"
and that was in a song about flossin...to be successful these days, you gotta be ORIGINAL OVER ALL. amd if you're not original, you've got to PURPOSELY MOCK YOURSELF...i could explain how thats done, but ive had enough beef in these last few days to feed all of Guatemala..!
as for Local/Regional Flavor...SLR *DOES* have a very distinct sound, but not any distinct rappers--thats not an insult, thats just the truth. These days, if you aint rappin like one of a very small group of people (incl. Jay-Z, Nas, Jadakiss, Snoop, Cash Money, etc), then its hard to leave your mark...so what I think is (read my signature) that you need people who know how to flow like these people for your label to have that "next level" success, not to mimic them, but to be able to break down how their flow works, what elements it has, the typical sentence structures, and so on.....good luck finding an artist that can do that!
I know, maybe...besides me... 1 other person that can do it...i heard a handfull of his tracks, and in most of em (not all), he's mocking some other rapper's style, and doin a DAMN GOOD JOB at it......welp, he just signed to some label in miami, his CD's comin out later this year....