It's interesting how artists who are "ahead of their time" are punished. The first time a new thing is done, it's too much for people to accept, you need to repeatedly bring that new idea to their attention until they start to see it as non-threatening. So they wait till the next time to engage with that type of sound or artist. If the real pioneer artists waited to be a follower after someone else made the style or sound popular, they would have had massive success. So pretty much all the most original artists, songs and albums can be listed here.
E.g.
*If 808s and Heartbreak was released in the 2010s after Drake's Take Care and Weeknd's Trilogy, instead of '08, it might have become a Thriller-size smash, one of the most popular albums ever, due to its adherence to so many of the music trends of our times. But it makes no sense to say this, because 808s actually inspired that music and if 808s was not released in 2008, this sound wouldn't have been popular.
*If Tegan and Sara waited to release Heartthrob until after Taylor Swift's 1989, Heartthrob would have been a much bigger hit because the style is nearly identical, but why is that? Oh yeah, because Taylor and her producers consciously copied Heartthrob's style. Granted, T&S did release another very similar styled album three years later to capitalize on this success, but by the time LYTD dropped in May last year, Taylor was rapidly fading into a problematic fave at best, so T&S got the worst of both worlds- they were ripped off by Taylor, who popularized their sound so much that it got overexposed, and even associated it with unpleasant right wing political ideologies and racism, just in time for the lovable leftist queer pop duo of T&S to return with an album that "sounded like Taylor Swift." I mean, LYTD isn't a classic, but it was greeted with a "meh" it didn't deserve.
*If D'Angelo waited to release the Black Messiah album until 2015, it would have been much more popular and critically acclaimed because it would have fit with the "woke" lyrics and revival of jazzy, noisy, Afrocentric sounds in R&B and hip hop after Ferguson, and after TPAB by Kendrick. But in fact, if D'Angelo waited, those things might never have become such widespread trends at all, since Black Messiah was one of TPAB's main inspirations.
*If Grimes waited to release the Visions album until after Lorde's Pure Heroine, it would have been much more popular. But of course, Lorde was inspired by Grimes and was even signed to a record deal partly on Grimes recommendations (I think) because she was seen as a next Grimes. So it would be nonsensical for Visions to not exist yet until after Lorde, since Lorde was only able to have that success partly due to Grimes.