一名腎上腺素造就的高盛說唱歌手

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.

一切都始於吉漢?鮑斯-利特爾(Jihan Bowes-Little，見上圖)那首寫給自己揹包的歌——《高盛揹包》(Goldman Rucksack)。第一次公開表演時，這名年輕的美國銀行家只感到腎上腺素在體內奔涌。那次表演的內容是用說唱的形式向觀衆講述自己曾經面臨的兩難境地：是該將自己揹包上的高盛標誌朝向內側讓人看不見，還是該朝向外側讓人一目瞭然地看到呢？正是在那個位於倫敦西部的表演會場，他下定決心，以Metis的藝名開始了一段隱祕的嘻哈藝人生涯。

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.

從那時起，鮑斯-利特爾開始了一種雙重職業的生活。他白天在高盛(Goldman Sachs)做信貸衍生品交易員，下班後脫下西裝、換上寬鬆的牛仔褲和運動鞋，去喧鬧的演出場所表演說唱。有時，他一邊交易着信貸衍生品，一邊匆忙寫幾句歌詞；有時，剛表演完，他就接到東京打來的工作電話。在第一次登臺那晚之後，他就不再向其他表演者談及他在銀行的工作。他努力不讓銀行的同事知道他的夜間職業，也努力不讓其他說唱歌手知道他的日間職業。有一度，他甚至僱傭了一名公關顧問，來確保他的名字不出現在媒體上。

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.”

鮑斯-利特爾第二職業的靈感來自7年前，當時，在位於諾丁山的一家面向銀行家的私人會所，他被說唱詩人索爾?威廉斯(Saul Williams)的表演迷住了。他回憶道：“這，怎麼說呢，絕對是震撼心靈。他一個人往舞臺上一站，沒有音樂，沒有其他東西的紛擾，就那樣把整屋人迷住了。”

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後，兩個從來沒公開表演過的人開始挑戰自我、強迫自己嘗試公開表演。就這樣，一週之後，當時26歲的鮑斯-利特爾開始爲參加“開放麥克風之夜”(Open Mic night)做準備，那首《高升揹包》練得他口乾舌燥、焦躁不安。這首歌的歌詞唱出了他對自己那段兩難經歷的思考：“我想玩地下音樂，賺全世界人的錢，可他們說，這兩樣你不能都得。”

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.”

這首歌寫的是投行發給新員工的揹包。鮑斯-利特爾非常愛思考，甚至到了有些過分的地步。對他而言，揹包不只是一種用來攜帶東西的工具。“走在華爾街，可以看到無數年輕人，揹着標有他們所在銀行標識的揹包在街上走。”

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”.

鮑斯-利特爾是混血兒，也是家族裏出的第一個大學生。他說，儘管進了高盛公司，但他對精英雲集的銀行界仍抱有許多成見，並強烈地“感到不想讓這份金融業工作改變自己是誰”。

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，他拒絕展示公司的標識，寧願背自己那個十分破舊的包。“過了一段時間，我想，‘這有點不自然。我必須背新包。’於是我就背上了公司的揹包。然而走出公寓以後，我想，我是應該就這麼把標識露在外面揹着，還是應該換個面？朝裏還是朝外？朝外背是否太自負？抑或朝裏背也同樣自負？”

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.”

於是，他把揹包裏面翻出來揹着，穿着運動服，戴着耳機離開了健身房，然後登上了列車。同車廂的乘客都躲着他。“當時我感覺自己受到了歧視。我知道，我只用把揹包翻個面，就能頓時讓所有人對我刮目相看。”

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.

鮑斯-利特爾的老家在美國加州北部，他在布朗大學(Brown University)念過哲學和經濟學。對他而言，銀行業之所以吸引人，不僅是因爲高薪（銀行業的薪水能夠確保讓他過上比父母寬裕得多的生活），還因爲這個行業“充滿競爭”、“非常刺激”。他曾在摩根士丹利(Morgan Stanley)實習過一段時間，那段時間他常常工作到凌晨三點。

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”.

在倫敦政治經濟學院(London School of Economics)念研究生時，鮑斯-利特爾被當時的高盛自營交易業務（該業務後來被禁止了）主管克里斯蒂安?西瓦-喬西(Christian Siva-Jothy)迷住了。西瓦-喬西在倫敦政治經濟學院的演講，讓鮑斯-利特爾“一下子愛上了證券交易”。

“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.”

“有許多關於他的傳聞，比如他住在一個私人的小島上，乘直升飛機去上班……當克里斯蒂安站起來、開口說話的時候，我發現他真的非常謙遜、非常安靜、非常謙卑，簡直是佛陀一樣的人物。”所謂自營交易業務，就是銀行爲了替自己（而不是客戶）盈利而開展的獨立於銀行其他業務的交易活動。對當年容易受影響的鮑斯-利特爾而言，這種交易活動顯得超然而純粹。“他們的樣子（或行爲）一點兒也不像其他交易員。他們非常平靜。”

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”.)

於是，他加入了高盛在紐約的Principal Finance部門。之後他又去了倫敦，在那裏他受邀加入了自營交易部門，做分析師。在該部門的交易員離開高盛創辦自己的對衝基金之後，他於2006年調到了信貸衍生品部門。（他認爲抵押貸款證券產品無罪，因爲它們“並不比買下10倍於自身收入的房子的那些人更瘋狂”。）

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.”

他堅持說，證券交易這一行是憑實力說話的，由此拋棄了年輕時的偏見。“不論是毛頭小夥還是長者，男人還是女人，鴻儒還是白丁，如果你只會誇誇其談，遲早會被數字揭穿。人們依據我的成果對我做出評價。對於一名少數族裔人士來說，這真的十分罕見。非常讓人舒心。”

Nonetheless, he was anxious about his identity as a hip-hop artist becoming known at work.

不過，他很擔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.”

“這簡直像那種老套情節——公司裏唯一的黑人或者說混血兒是名嘻哈歌手。我感覺這不是向高層管理者推銷自己的最好辦法。”

So every night he would leave work and perform in open mic nights all over London.

就這樣，每天晚上下班以後，他在倫敦各處的開放麥克風之夜表演說唱。

After the 2008 credit crunch, he quit. “The atmosphere at work was tiring. The music was happening.”

2008年信貸危機之後，他辭職了。“公司裏的氛圍令人煩躁。我感到了音樂的召喚。”

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.”

他飛去了洛杉磯，專心做音樂，用積蓄暫時應付開銷。然而一年之後，儘管取得了一些重大成功，他的嘻哈生涯卻仍然未見起色。於是，他回到倫敦，去了一家對衝基金。他拒絕透露該基金的名字，不過通過谷歌很容易搜出來。自從重返金融業以來，他沒有過離開的打算。“之前我感覺煩躁不安。如今我沒有這種感覺了。”

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.

不過，他依然花時間在工作室裏做音樂，並準備發行一首單曲——《都來吧》(All In)。這首歌曾被可口可樂(Coco-Cola)用在墨西哥的廣告宣傳中。

Instead of dreaming of escaping banking, he insists, this dual life is better. Now he finds parallels between the two worlds.

他堅持說，比起憧憬逃離銀行業，如今的雙重生活更好。現在的他發現了兩個世界的相似之處。

“Both banking and hip hop are very competitive, both are incredibly exciting and at the very, very, very top, remunerative.”

“銀行業和嘻哈藝術競爭性都非常強，兩者都非常刺激，並且這兩個行業中最拔尖者都能賺很多錢。”

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.

不過，說唱歌手和銀行家顯然都是誇誇其談之徒？他回答說：“嘻哈可能是歌手談論自己最多的一種音樂類別了。”他承認，那些開着保時捷、不可一世的交易員，與那些打扮花裏胡哨的黑幫說唱樂明星有許多共同之處。

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.

不過他指出：“嘻哈音樂中也有（一類）非常富有詩意。”他還暗示說，地下說唱表演者與極度謹慎的自營業務交易員也有類似之處。

Today he mixes his two worlds, instead of keeping them secret and separate.

如今，他把兩個世界融爲一體，而不再將兩者隔離開、讓兩者互不知曉。

“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.”

“來觀看我的嘻哈表演的那些金融界人士，是我原本永遠也想象不到會來的那些人。我認爲，人的多面性能夠超越我們最大膽的想象。在我看來，銀行家不一定不如音樂家有創意。”