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It was the paean to his backpack that swung it. Jihan Bowes-Little’s ode to his bag, entitled “Goldman Rucksack”. The adrenalin rush the young American banker experienced retelling his dilemma – whether to wear his bag with the bank’s logo facing inward, unseen, or outwards and clearly visible – was his first public performance. It was there in that small west London venue that he decided to pursue a secret life as a hip-hop artist called Metis.
一切都始于吉汉?鲍斯-利特尔(Jihan Bowes-Little，见上图)那首写给自己背包的歌——《高盛背包》(Goldman Rucksack)。第一次公开表演时，这名年轻的美国银行家只感到肾上腺素在体内奔涌。那次表演的内容是用说唱的形式向观众讲述自己曾经面临的两难境地：是该将自己背包上的高盛标志朝向内侧让人看不见，还是该朝向外侧让人一目了然地看到呢？正是在那个位于伦敦西部的表演会场，他下定决心，以Metis的艺名开始了一段隐秘的嘻哈艺人生涯。
The dual career saw him swapping suits at the end of his office day for baggy jeans and trainers, scribbling lyrics while trading credit derivatives at Goldman Sachs, and taking calls from Tokyo after rapping at steamy gigs. After that first night’s performance, he refused to speak about his banking job to his fellow performers. He tried to keep the double life a secret from both the banking and the hip-hop fraternity – at one point even hiring a public relations consultant to keep his name out of the press.
从那时起，鲍斯-利特尔开始了一种双重职业的生活。他白天在高盛(Goldman Sachs)做信贷衍生品交易员，下班后脱下西装、换上宽松的牛仔裤和运动鞋，去喧闹的演出场所表演说唱。有时，他一边交易着信贷衍生品，一边匆忙写几句歌词；有时，刚表演完，他就接到东京打来的工作电话。在第一次登台那晚之后，他就不再向其他表演者谈及他在银行的工作。他努力不让银行的同事知道他的夜间职业，也努力不让其他说唱歌手知道他的日间职业。有一度，他甚至雇佣了一名公关顾问，来确保他的名字不出现在媒体上。
The inspiration for his second career came seven years ago, when the American became transfixed watching Saul Williams, the spoken word poet. “It was just, like, absolutely mind-blowing,” recalls Mr Bowes-Little, sitting in a private members’ club in Notting Hill, home to bankers and the carnival. “One person on stage captivating a room full of people, no music, no distractions.”
鲍斯-利特尔第二职业的灵感来自7年前，当时，在位于诺丁山的一家面向银行家的私人会所，他被说唱诗人索尔?威廉斯(Saul Williams)的表演迷住了。他回忆道：“这，怎么说呢，绝对是震撼心灵。他一个人往舞台上一站，没有音乐，没有其他东西的纷扰，就那样把整屋人迷住了。”
Walking back to his flat with his friend, the pair, who had never performed in public before, challenged themselves to try their hand at it. Which is how, a week later, Mr Bowes-Little, who was then 26, found himself dry-mouthed and anxious preparing to deliver “Goldman Rucksack” on stage at an Open Mic night. The lines were public musings on his personal dilemma: “I wanted underground soul, with overseas dough, they said you maybe have one but you can’t have both.”
跟朋友一起返回公寓之后，两个从来没公开表演过的人开始挑战自我、强迫自己尝试公开表演。就这样，一周之后，当时26岁的鲍斯-利特尔开始为参加“开放麦克风之夜”(Open Mic night)做准备，那首《高升背包》练得他口干舌燥、焦躁不安。这首歌的歌词唱出了他对自己那段两难经历的思考：“我想玩地下音乐，赚全世界人的钱，可他们说，这两样你不能都得。”
The rhyme was about the company bag that is issued to junior employees starting at investment banks. To Mr Bowes-Little, who is thoughtful to the point of being over-analytical, a rucksack is more than just something you use to carry stuff in. “When you walk around Wall Street, there are just hundreds of kids all walking around branded by their respective banks.”
这首歌写的是投行发给新员工的背包。鲍斯-利特尔非常爱思考，甚至到了有些过分的地步。对他而言，背包不只是一种用来携带东西的工具。“走在华尔街，可以看到无数年轻人，背着标有他们所在银行标识的背包在街上走。”
Mr Bowes-Little, who is mixed-race and the first in his family to attend university, says that despite joining Goldman Sachs, he still had a great deal of prejudice about the elitist world of banking and a strong “sense that I didn’t want to let being in finance change who I was”.
鲍斯-利特尔是混血儿，也是家族里出的第一个大学生。他说，尽管进了高盛公司，但他对精英云集的银行界仍抱有许多成见，并强烈地“感到不想让这份金融业工作改变自己是谁”。
So he refused to sport the company logo, preferring instead to carry his old beaten-up bag. “After a while I thought, ‘This is a bit contrived. I need a new bag’. So I put it on. But I was walking out of my flat, and I thought should I wear it this way, with the insignia out. Or should I wear it the other way. In or out? Is it ego? Or is going the other way equally egoistic.”
因此，他拒绝展示公司的标识，宁愿背自己那个十分破旧的包。“过了一段时间，我想，‘这有点不自然。我必须背新包。’于是我就背上了公司的背包。然而走出公寓以后，我想，我是应该就这么把标识露在外面背着，还是应该换个面？朝里还是朝外？朝外背是否太自负？抑或朝里背也同样自负？”
He wore it inside-out, left the gym wearing his tracksuit and headphones and got on the train. His fellow passengers backed away from him. “I was feeling quite judged. I knew all I had to do was turn my bag around to change everybody’s definition of me.”
于是，他把背包里面翻出来背着，穿着运动服，戴着耳机离开了健身房，然后登上了列车。同车厢的乘客都躲着他。“当时我感觉自己受到了歧视。我知道，我只用把背包翻个面，就能顿时让所有人对我刮目相看。”
Originally from northern California, he studied philosophy and economics at Brown University, and became attracted to banking not just because of the salary, which promised a lifestyle far more moneyed than that of his parents, but because it was “competitive” and “exciting”. He undertook an internship at Morgan Stanley, often working until 3am.
鲍斯-利特尔的老家在美国加州北部，他在布朗大学(Brown University)念过哲学和经济学。对他而言，银行业之所以吸引人，不仅是因为高薪（银行业的薪水能够确保让他过上比父母宽裕得多的生活），还因为这个行业“充满竞争”、“非常刺激”。他曾在摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)实习过一段时间，那段时间他常常工作到凌晨三点。
While a postgraduate student at the London School of Economics, he became mesmerised by the enigmatic Christian Siva-Jothy, then head of proprietary trading – which was subsequently banned – at Goldman Sachs. Mr Siva-Jothy’s talk to LSE students made Mr Bowes-Little “fall in love with trading”.
在伦敦政治经济学院(London School of Economics)念研究生时，鲍斯-利特尔被当时的高盛自营交易业务（该业务后来被禁止了）主管克里斯蒂安?西瓦-乔西(Christian Siva-Jothy)迷住了。西瓦-乔西在伦敦政治经济学院的演讲，让鲍斯-利特尔“一下子爱上了证券交易”。
“There were all these rumours about him, that he lived on a private island and landed his helicopter on the top of the office?.?.?.?when Christian got up and spoke, he was really unassuming, really quiet, really humble, kind of a Buddha-like character.” Proprietary trading – in which a bank trades for its own profit, rather than a client’s, independently of the bank’s other activities – appeared philosophical and pure to the impressionable Mr Bowes-Little. “They don’t look [or act] anything like other traders. They have a centredness.”
“有许多关于他的传闻，比如他住在一个私人的小岛上，乘直升飞机去上班……当克里斯蒂安站起来、开口说话的时候，我发现他真的非常谦逊、非常安静、非常谦卑，简直是佛陀一样的人物。”所谓自营交易业务，就是银行为了替自己（而不是客户）盈利而开展的独立于银行其他业务的交易活动。对当年容易受影响的鲍斯-利特尔而言，这种交易活动显得超然而纯粹。“他们的样子（或行为）一点儿也不像其他交易员。他们非常平静。”
So he joined Goldman Sachs in New York in the principal finance division before moving to London, where he was invited to join the proprietary traders as an analyst. After the traders left to set up their own hedge funds, he switched to credit derivatives in 2006. (He defends the mortgage products as “no more nuts than the people who bought houses for 10 times their own income”.)
于是，他加入了高盛在纽约的Principal Finance部门。之后他又去了伦敦，在那里他受邀加入了自营交易部门，做分析师。在该部门的交易员离开高盛创办自己的对冲基金之后，他于2006年调到了信贷衍生品部门。（他认为抵押贷款证券产品无罪，因为它们“并不比买下10倍于自身收入的房子的那些人更疯狂”。）
Trading, he insists, is meritocratic, thereby ditching his youthful prejudices. “It doesn’t matter if you’re young or old, man or woman, intellectual or pseudointellectual, if you’re a braggart, you can’t really hide behind the numbers. I was judged for what I produced, which, for an ethnic minority, is a real rarity. It’s really freeing.”
他坚持说，证券交易这一行是凭实力说话的，由此抛弃了年轻时的偏见。“不论是毛头小伙还是长者，男人还是女人，鸿儒还是白丁，如果你只会夸夸其谈，迟早会被数字揭穿。人们依据我的成果对我做出评价。对于一名少数族裔人士来说，这真的十分罕见。非常让人舒心。”
Nonetheless, he was anxious about his identity as a hip-hop artist becoming known at work.
不过，他很担心自己因嘻哈歌手的身份在公司出名。
“It’s a cliché, the only black or mixed-race person on the floor being a rapper. It didn’t feel like the best way to market myself to senior management.”
“这简直像那种老套情节——公司里唯一的黑人或者说混血儿是名嘻哈歌手。我感觉这不是向高层管理者推销自己的最好办法。”
So every night he would leave work and perform in open mic nights all over London.
就这样，每天晚上下班以后，他在伦敦各处的开放麦克风之夜表演说唱。
After the 2008 credit crunch, he quit. “The atmosphere at work was tiring. The music was happening.”
2008年信贷危机之后，他辞职了。“公司里的氛围令人烦躁。我感到了音乐的召唤。”
He flew to Los Angeles to focus on music, cushioned by his savings. But after a year, and despite some critical success, his hip-hop career failed to take off – so he returned to London to work for a hedge fund. He refuses to disclose the fund’s name but it is easy to find by searching Google. Since his re-entry into the world of finance, he has not been tempted to leave. “I was really trapped before. I don’t feel trapped any more.”
他飞去了洛杉矶，专心做音乐，用积蓄暂时应付开销。然而一年之后，尽管取得了一些重大成功，他的嘻哈生涯却仍然未见起色。于是，他回到伦敦，去了一家对冲基金。他拒绝透露该基金的名字，不过通过谷歌很容易搜出来。自从重返金融业以来，他没有过离开的打算。“之前我感觉烦躁不安。如今我没有这种感觉了。”
Nonetheless, he still spends time in the studio and is preparing to launch his single, “All In”, a track that was used by Coca-Cola for its advertising campaign in Mexico.
不过，他依然花时间在工作室里做音乐，并准备发行一首单曲——《都来吧》(All In)。这首歌曾被可口可乐(Coco-Cola)用在墨西哥的广告宣传中。
Instead of dreaming of escaping banking, he insists, this dual life is better. Now he finds parallels between the two worlds.
他坚持说，比起憧憬逃离银行业，如今的双重生活更好。现在的他发现了两个世界的相似之处。
“Both banking and hip hop are very competitive, both are incredibly exciting and at the very, very, very top, remunerative.”
“银行业和嘻哈艺术竞争性都非常强，两者都非常刺激，并且这两个行业中最拔尖者都能赚很多钱。”
Surely both rappers and bankers are braggarts? “Hip hop is probably the genre of music where people talk about themselves the most.” He concedes that brash, Porsche-driving traders have much in common with blingtastic gangsta-rap stars.
不过，说唱歌手和银行家显然都是夸夸其谈之徒？他回答说：“嘻哈可能是歌手谈论自己最多的一种音乐类别了。”他承认，那些开着保时捷、不可一世的交易员，与那些打扮花里胡哨的黑帮说唱乐明星有许多共同之处。
But he points out that “there is an incredibly poetic intelligent [strand] of hip hop as well”, suggesting there are similarities between underground spoken word performers and the ultra-discreet proprietary traders.
不过他指出：“嘻哈音乐中也有（一类）非常富有诗意。”他还暗示说，地下说唱表演者与极度谨慎的自营业务交易员也有类似之处。
Today he mixes his two worlds, instead of keeping them secret and separate.
如今，他把两个世界融为一体，而不再将两者隔离开、让两者互不知晓。
“The kinds of finance people who like to come to the hip-hop shows I never would have expected. People are more multifaceted than I think we give them credit for. It’s not obvious to me that bankers are less creative than musicians.”
“来观看我的嘻哈表演的那些金融界人士，是我原本永远也想象不到会来的那些人。我认为，人的多面性能够超越我们最大胆的想象。在我看来，银行家不一定不如音乐家有创意。”
