In a perfect world, all artists would respect their craft enough to know about the origins of what they do and so on and so forth, but it isn't a given. Realistically, you can't force a nikka to know or like something just because you think they should. And really some of this falls on the older generation, because it's the people of that generation that should be keeping it alive.
The difference with us '90s-era people is that although we were definitely into our present-day favorites, we still had that influence around. We had songs that sampled older songs which by extension got us to appreciate the older songs, we had older artists still making music that got airplay, etc. That's not really happening right now. Older artists are just old for the most part, and very few 90s songs are being sampled (because most of those songs themselves were sampling something else). The presence of that era is only being upheld thru nostalgia. And occasionally something will happen like "My Boo" becoming popular again for a few weeks. Other than that, young people in 2016 are very much removed from anything that's not happening in 2016... and their nostalgia is one totally different from ours.
The difference with us '90s-era people is that although we were definitely into our present-day favorites, we still had that influence around. We had songs that sampled older songs which by extension got us to appreciate the older songs, we had older artists still making music that got airplay, etc. That's not really happening right now. Older artists are just old for the most part, and very few 90s songs are being sampled (because most of those songs themselves were sampling something else). The presence of that era is only being upheld thru nostalgia. And occasionally something will happen like "My Boo" becoming popular again for a few weeks. Other than that, young people in 2016 are very much removed from anything that's not happening in 2016... and their nostalgia is one totally different from ours.