That's not true at all. The labels pushed the sound of the south. They paid indies to push radio stations to add those songs to their playlists in order to get spins. If your label didn't have the budget to spend a ton of money on an indie, you got no spins and without that you got no sales. Crank Dat and Laffy Taffy weren't flukes; they both got label backing to get them played nationwide.
Tha labels created the demand, then would balk at any rapper that didn't fit the mold they created a demand for. "Well... MC such-and-such is what's hot, and you don't sound like him so we're gonna pass on you as an artist" but the label is the reason that rapper's sound is hot in the first place.
Part of it stems from the Telecommunications Act of 1996, that deregulation radio station ownership. The independent radio stations that would have given any artist a shot no longer exist; they're all corporate owned stations run by Clear Channel, Radio One, etc. Payola, in the form of "indie" promoters is the other side of it, so you have a situation where in order to get played you have to have money for spins.
