Lets not pretend that wasn't a thing back in the day too. I'll never forget when Informer by Snow dropped and a bunch of my peers had no clue who Shan was. This was 1993. They thought he was just some random rapper.
And lets be real. In the 90's we weren't familiar with every 60's or 70's R&B act like that either. We knew the basics. I don't expect these youngins to be locked in with a passion for knowing the history like that. The reality is the youngins of every era are gonna be more in tune with whatever is popping in their era, like for instance, I done heard too many young cats in their 20's who keep saying that they don't know Will Smith and Ice Cube for being rappers. They know them for being actors. Similar to me experiencing Ronald Regan being the president in the 80's, not knowing him as an actor from the 50's.
Plus it's up to the individual if they want to pursue learning about the history. The same way I once perused learning about The Ink Spots and Billy Eckstine and Julia Lee and Louis Jordan and Bull Moose Jackson. Those names were huge back in the 1940's but most people in my age range aren't familiar. I know of them because as an individual I did research on Black music from the 40's.
