I think Drake is popular sure, but he is not on the same level as say ... Eminem circa 20 years ago. That's not his fault, it's just the media landscape has changed too much, the internet and social media has watered down celebrity in general.
I don’t remember Eminem being significantly more popular than Drake. Em had bigger albums, partly because he peaked at a time when people were still buying full albums (CDs) and partly because he was actually into albums as a concept. But if you look at individual songs that charted high, the general presence of the artist in mainstream music, Drake blows Eminem out of the water. Eminem was more controversial so he got more attention, but that doesn’t equal having more fans or sales.
Of course it’s hard to quantify popularity, but subjectively in my experience they were both the “big popular mainstream rapper” for a period of time. People who listened to rap had strong opinions on them, people who didn’t listen to rap all knew who they were and could probably give you a song title or two at a minimum. Neither of them were on the Jackson/Swift level of next level fame, but they were both household names in pretty much the same way. I don’t see the difference you’re asserting here.
Every one of the modern comparables to yesterday's huge stars almost across the board is less popular.
LeBron is no Michael Jordan, good luck golf with manufacturing another Tiger Woods. It only stands to reason that NHL hockey, which could never market anyone for shit to begin with has never had a star as big as Gretzky.
I think this does apply to certain things like specific TV shows and movies, because people aren’t consuming media the same way they used to.
Not really buying it for celebrities, though. We can argue whether LeBron is at Jordan’s level as GOAT, but find me any person who doesn’t recognize the name LeBron. Old ladies and small children know him the same way they knew Jordan. The difference between them is that Mike was way better looking and a lot more charismatic, so he ended up having iconic media moments where LeBron falls flat. Same thing with Tiger — golf was struggling with a generational decline in popularity until this good-looking Blasian guy set the record book on fire. He was a blip, not a pattern, like Caitlyn Clark blowing up in a sport that was otherwise obscure. In between, the Williams sisters blew up in women’s tennis which had nothing like them before and won’t after. Those bursts of celebrity don’t occur in any particular pattern.
Gretzky was just Gretzky. He could’ve come along at any time, he happened to come along at that particular time. It’s not like he was boosted by some sort of crazy hockey popularity in the early 80s, he actually overcame the UNpopularity of the sport at that time.
