The Forbes 30 Under 30 music list is not something that anyone I know has ever particularly given a damn about. Nevertheless, it does seem that hyper-precociousness has a particularly strong hold on mainstream culture these days. The obsession with hypertrophied talent as it pertains to art, however, seems to me to run counter to the nature of art itself. A recording is captured time, and each listen, at each stage of life, becomes a layer in a grand palimpsest. Taken together, these 30 records make an eclectic bunch: for their creators, 30 very different experiences of life, and for us as listeners, 30 very different experiences of time.