Your perception of Kanye only being famous "because his wife is famous" is something that is influenced by your own media consumption. I'm not sure if you actua

Your perception of Kanye only being famous "because his wife is famous" is something that is influenced by your own media consumption. I'm not sure if you actually asked people that they would struggle - Kanye has been big for a long time. I think if people struggled to know the names of the songs it would probably just be because Kanye isn't radio friendly. The reason music "died" around the time of Napster, is that editorial distribution died. Before Napster, if you wanted to listen to music you either had the radio - which played the same thing for everyone, or you really had to dig record crates. Now it's completely possible to exclusively listen to hyperpop-house-vaporwave artists and not know who is charting. In short if you were expecting someone to curate your music, that mechanism no longer exists; likewise if the algorithm of your streaming service of choice is never playing Kanye for you, you might be confused to why everyone thinks he's so famous.