I must confess: When I first encountered Alison Gold's 'Chinese Food,' the latest sonic eruption from Patrice Wilson, the impresario behind Rebecca Black's notoriously terrible debut song and video 'Friday,' I was sure it was a conspiracy to engineer viral success by trolling Asians.

我必须承认：第一次听艾莉森・戈尔德(Alison Gold)的《中国菜》(Chinese Food)时，我敢肯定它就是想通过夸奖亚洲人达到在网上迅速蹿红目的的一个阴谋。这是来自帕特里斯・威尔森(Patrice Wilson)的最新热门歌曲，他是丽贝卡・布莱克(Rebecca Black)臭名昭著的首支视频单曲《星期五》(Friday)的幕后制作人。

(I'm still convinced this is an actual thing, by the way; the strategic desire to cultivate rage-views certainly explains inane -- and flat-out racist -- garbage like Day Above Ground's despicable 'AsianGirlz.')

（顺便提一下，我仍然深信事实就是如此；通过精心策划以博取眼球，这种欲望显然能解释为何会出现诸如Day Above Ground乐队卑劣的《亚裔女郎》(AsianGirlz)这类空洞又带有赤裸裸种族歧视的烂歌。）

But after speaking with Wilson himself this week, I've changed my mind. Yes, 'Chinese Food' is brain-meltingly awful, and it's impossible to view it without tasting a little vomit in your mouth, especially if you're Chinese. Or if you eat food. But I don't believe he made it in order to intentionally offend Asians.

但最近和威尔森本人交谈过后，我改变了想法。没错，《中国菜》这首歌糟糕透顶，看的时候难免会有恶心的感觉，如果你是中国人或者在吃东西的话就更严重。但我认为他创作这首歌并不是有意想冒犯亚洲人。

Wilson's former Ark Music Factory collaborator, Clarence Jey -- himself Sri Lankan American -- put me in touch with his ex-partner. The 'Friday' experience and the free-fire litigation that followed its unexpected pop-culture explosion led Jey and Wilson to amicably part ways; Jey, who retains the song rights to 'Friday,' has focused on building his recording studio and production company Music Intersection, while Wilson has doggedly continued to seed the Petri dish of YouTube with new sources of viral contagion.

威尔森在方舟音乐工厂(Ark Music Factory)唱片公司的前合作伙伴、斯里兰卡裔美国人克拉伦斯・杰伊(Clarence Jey)帮我跟他牵上了线。杰伊和威尔森在《星期五》制作中的合作经历，以及这首歌意外引发流行文化大爆炸后接踵而至的官司，导致两人友好地分手了。保留《星期五》歌曲版权的杰伊集中精力创建自己的录音室及制作公司Music Intersection，而威尔森仍固执地继续在YouTube上播撒新的病毒传播种子。

'The video has certainly caused a 'stir,'' laughs Jey. (I see what you did there, Clarence.) 'But that was the intent. The concept made me laugh -- I think it has entertainment value, whatever you say about the songwriting. It's all subjective when you look at it as entertainment. But is it intentionally offensive? I don't think so. Well, maybe the scene with the geishas, which is confusing. I can tell you that he practices what he preaches, though. When we Patrice and I would hang out, we used to 'chow' a lot of Chinese food.' (Oops, you did it again.)

杰伊笑道：“那个视频的确引起了‘轰动’。”（我知道你说的意思，克拉伦斯。译者注：stir既指轰动也有搅拌的意思，可能指歌曲视频开头搅拌炒面的镜头。）他说：“但那就是目的。这首歌曲的概念让我觉得好笑──不管你对它的创作怎么看，我都觉得它有娱乐价值。把它当娱乐看的时候完全是主观的。但它是有意冒犯吗？我认为不是的。好吧，或许艺妓的镜头让人有点困惑。不过我可以告诉你他是在躬行己说。我和帕特里夏出去玩的时候‘吃’过很多中国菜。”（哎呀，你又一语双关了。译者注：chow有吃和炒面两种意思，在视频中多次出现。）

I reached Wilson as he was driving from another interview in Los Angeles, on his way back to his home in Orange County. Wilson is charming and disarmingly frank over the phone. He also has a hard-to-place accent: Though he was born in Nigeria and spent his childhood there, his way of talking sounds more meta-European -- which Wilson explains is due to both his parentage and his peripatetic adulthood. 'My mother is Irish,' he says. 'I went back and forth between London and Africa, and then after I graduated college, I moved to Slovakia to go to med school. While I was there, I met a guy' -- Eastern European pop star Ibrahim Maiga -- 'who turned me on to music. I ended up being a backup singer for him, and I learned to speak fluent Slovak. I traveled through Budapest, Hungary, Poland. And then finally I ended up back here. So that explains my accent -- it's because I speak a lot of mixed-up different languages.'

电话打通的时候，威尔森刚结束在洛杉矶的另一个采访，正开车回他在橘子郡(Orange County)的家。威尔森在电话里很有魅力，并且十分坦诚。他还有很难辨识的口音：虽然他生在尼日利亚，并且在那里度过童年，但他说话的方式更像是欧洲人──他解释说这是由于自己的出身和成年后游历的双重影响。他说：“我母亲是爱尔兰人，我在伦敦和非洲之间来回穿梭，然后我大学毕业后，就去了斯洛伐克读医学院。在那里我遇见了一个人──东欧歌星Ibrahim Maiga──他让我对音乐有了兴趣。最后我成了他的伴唱，还学会了流利的斯洛伐克语。我去过布达佩斯、匈牙利、波兰旅行。最后我又回到了这里。所以这就解释了我的口音──是因为我把大量不同的语言混着说。”

Wilson originally moved to the U.S. to attend Whitworth University, a Christian college in Spokane, Washington. (His mother was a minister, who met his chemical engineer father while on an African mission.) But eventually, his love of music led him to quit college and move to Hollywood.

威尔森最早来美国是去惠特沃斯大学(Whitworth University)上学，这是在华盛顿州斯波坎(Spokane)的一家基督教学院。（他的母亲是一位牧师，她去非洲传教时遇到了威尔森的父亲，他是一名化学工程师。）但最后，他对音乐的热爱让他从大学退学去了好莱坞。

'I just realized that since I was in the U.S., I had the opportunity to make music here. This is the land of opportunity. But it didn't work out so well,' he says. Wilson's talents, shaped by his background in Eastern European pop, didn't mesh with the more polished and cynical tastes of American audiences. It was then that he had his eureka moment: Instead of bringing his Eastern European-forged sensibilities to the U.S., he'd find and develop American pop idols to bring to Eastern Europe. 'So that was my goal -- everyone loves American music, and if I could bring some new American artists to Slovakia, I'm sure they would be big.'

他说：“我只是意识到，既然我在美国，我就有机会在这里做音乐。这里遍地都是机会。但结果不怎么好。”由于深受东欧流行音乐的影响，威尔森的才华与美国听众更为精致和愤世嫉俗的口味并不契合。就是在那时候他灵光一闪：与其把自己在东欧形成的乐感带到美国，不如在美国发掘和培养流行偶像然后带到东欧。他说：“所以这就是我的目标──所有人都喜欢美国音乐，如果我能把美国新锐艺人带到斯洛伐克，肯定会很红。”

Wilson connected with Jey over the Internet and convinced him of the value of his vision. He recruited videographers, makeup artists and other creative talent via Craigslist. And then he put out a casting call for wannabe stars -- wannabes who could afford to pay a small fee to offset Wilson's costs. 'That was the model I created,' he says. 'I find the artist, they pay me -- it was $2400 back then -- and for that they get a song, a music video, our promotional package. And we would submit the artist for review to some independent record labels in Europe.'

威尔森在网上和杰伊取得了联系，并说服其相信他对于未来的预见极具价值。他从Craigslist上招了摄像师、化妆师及其他创意人才，接着发布试镜通知寻找想当明星的艺人──那些付得起很少的费用以补偿威尔森成本的艺人。他说：“那是我开创的模式。我找到艺人，他们付我钱──当时是2400美元──这样他们就有一首歌、一个音乐录影带，还有我们整套的宣传。然后我们会把艺人拿给欧洲的某些独立唱片公司进行审核。”

The YouTube thing was accidental. 'We just put the videos on YouTube to show the parents,' he says. 'But then other people started watching them.'

在YouTube上走红纯属偶然。他说：“我们就是把视频放到YouTube上给家长们看。但是其他人也开始看这些视频。”

An artist named Kaya Rosenthal unexpectedly managed to accrue over 100,000 views. And that led Wilson and Jey to realize they'd stumbled onto a unique proposition. 'Yes, you had a lot of people criticizing us, but that's okay -- our artists realized, where else are you going to get 100,000 people listening to you?' he says. 'All of a sudden we had four or five artists a month. It was a business! We were making some money! And then 'Friday' hit, and it wasn't just 100,000 views, it was 100 million, we were all astonished and confused.'

一个名叫卡亚・罗森塔尔(Kaya Rosenthal)的艺人意外获得了超过10万次的点击量。这使得威尔森和杰伊意识到他们碰到了独特的契机。他说：“没错，有很多人批评我们，但那没关系──我们的艺人意识到，还能从哪儿找10万人来听你的歌呢？突然间我们每个月就有了四五个艺人。这是个商机！我们在赚钱！然后《星期五》红了，而且不止10万次点击量，而是1亿。我们都很吃惊，也感到不解。”

The views were driven by negativity -- at least at first. But they were coming, and coming faster than anyone could imagine. So were the opportunities, for both Rebecca Black and Ark. The business looked like it was poised to make some serious money.

点击量是由负面评论顶起来的──至少刚开始是这样。但点击量越来越多，增速超出了任何人的想像。丽贝卡・布莱克和方舟的机会也越来越多。看起来像是注定要赚大钱的势头。

'It was then I realized, I had no contracts with anybody!' says Wilson. 'This is L.A., everyone is nice here, right? We did everything on handshakes. Before I even noticed, everyone around me had lawyered up. I got hit by lawsuits left and right. After it was all over, I had nothing -- I only made about $40,000 from 'Friday' and that went to lawyer's fees.'

威尔森说：“就在那个时候我意识到，我没跟任何人签约！这里可是洛杉矶，大家都很友好，不是吗？我们都是握手成交。不知从什么时候开始，身边所有人都开始打官司了。我受到各种官司的夹击。一切都结束后，我什么都没了──我只从《星期五》赚到了4万美元左右，而且最后都花在了律师身上。”

Wilson left Ark to its new owners, whom he'd brought on board after Jey left, in an attempt to hold things together. 'I had to start from scratch,' he says. 'All of the subscribers, the views -- they were all on the Ark account. When I launched PMWLive, it was zero all over again.'

威尔森把方舟留给了它的新主人，这些人是他在杰伊走后拉过来的，目的是为了把所有事情理顺。他说：“我不得不从头开始。所有的订阅用户，还有点击记录都在方舟的账户里。启动PMWLive的时候又是从零开始。”

PMWLive revived the original Ark model, but at a higher price point. 'My artists, they pay around $5400 to $7000 per project,' he says. 'But it's still a great deal. They get everything for that. And they get a lot more exposure, because I do one song a year that is a viral song.'

PMWLive重新启用了方舟原有的模式，但价格门槛更高。他说：“我的艺人，他们每个项目付大概5400到7000美元。但依然是不错的交易。这些钱什么都包了。他们的曝光率会多得多，因为每年我都会有一首在网络上蹿红的歌。”

Think about that for a second. Yes, Wilson hit the viral jackpot with 'Friday' back in 2011. But in 2012, he wrote a song called 'It's Thanksgiving' for a young girl named Nicole Westbrook, with a video featuring Westbrook singing into a drumstick and dropping some white-girl rap, and Wilson making his typical cameo wearing a turkey costume. That song generated 14 million views, and landed Westbrook on 'Access Hollywood,' ABC News and MTV.com. Not quite 'Friday,' but still a confirmation that Wilson knew how to make lightning strike twice.

让我们来回顾一下。没错，威尔森在2011年凭借《星期五》红透网络，但在2012年，他为一个名叫妮可・韦斯特布鲁克(Nicole Westbrook)的年轻女孩写了一首名叫《感恩节到了》(It's Thanksgiving)的歌。韦斯特布鲁克在视频里用鸡腿当话筒唱歌，穿插白人女生风格的说唱，威尔森也穿着土鸡装一如既往地客串出境。那首歌获得了1400万点击量，让韦斯特布鲁克上了《Access Hollywood》、ABC News和MTV.com。虽然不及《星期五》，但依然证明威尔森知道如何才能好运连连。

And now, with 'Chinese Food' sitting at over 8.5 million views just four days after posting, he may well have made the case that he can do it at will -- cranking out one viral song a year, every year. Yes, the firehose is largely due to hateclicks, but there are still 23,000 people who've clicked 'like' on the video, and it is almost certain to show up on the venerable Billboard Hot 100 charts next week, which this February was adjusted to incorporate social media views in its ranking.

如今，《中国菜》上传仅四天就获得了超过850万的点击量，威尔森或许很好地证明了自己可以轻而易举做到每年制作一首网络红歌。没错，人气主要来自“踩”的点击量，但依然有2.3万人点“赞”，而且下周几乎肯定可以挺进权威的Billboard 100首最热歌曲排行榜。今年 2月，该排行榜已经得到调整，社交媒体点击量被纳入排行考量标准。

So what's Wilson's formula?

那么威尔森的秘方是什么？

'I think a big part of it is that I come from a different background,' he says. 'Everyone follows the American pattern here, and I don't know how to do that. I'm from Africa, London, Slovakia, I have my own pattern. I have cheesy ideas! I mean, I don't think they're cheesy, but other people do. And that's okay, because if a song isn't controversial and you have no money to promote it, it most likely will not do well. I make music that people want to talk about. Sure, they hate it. But I'm used to the hate.'

他说：“我觉得很大一部分是因为我来自不同的背景。这里所有人都遵循美国模式，而我不知道如何遵循。我来自非洲、伦敦、斯洛伐克，我有我自己的模式。我有俗气的想法！我的意思是，我不认为这些想法俗气，但其他人这样觉得。这没关系，因为如果一首歌没有争议，你没钱去宣传它，很有可能就不会红。我创作能引起话题的音乐。没错，他们讨厌我的歌。但我习惯了这种讨厌。”

Wilson doesn't set out to make people hate him, but he welcomes it as the price of getting his artists the exposure they're looking for. And that explains 'Chinese Food,' as well as 'Thanksgiving' and 'Friday.' The music is metronome-simple. The beats are white-label generic. The performances are prairie-flat and virtually indistinguishable. What people are really keying into in the songs is Wilson's unfettered id.

威尔森的初衷并不是想让人们讨厌他，但他把这种讨厌当作让他的艺人获得理想曝光率的代价。这就解释了《中国菜》、《感恩节》和《星期五》的成功。歌曲节奏简单，节拍是典型的白人流行音乐。表演平淡无奇，几乎没有辨识度。人们真正关注的是威尔森无处不在的客串。

Viewers frequently attack Wilson's cameos as awkward and skeevy -- the image of a middle aged man capering around with a bunch of chirpy adolescents brings up bad associations. But seen from another angle, Wilson's charges -- he calls them 'clients' -- are hardly naive. 'I always tell the artists, 'You know my whole history with Rebecca Black, with Nicole Westbrook -- you know what people will say,' says Wilson. 'You will sing this song, and they will hate this song. Are you ready for that?'

观众常常攻击威尔森的客串很笨拙，而且令人厌恶──一个中年男人和一群活泼少女在一起欢呼雀跃的画面会让人有不好的联想。但从另一个角度来看，威尔森的艺人──他称她们为“客户”──也谈不上单纯。威尔森说：“我总是跟艺人说，‘你很了解我跟丽贝卡・布莱克还有妮可・韦斯特布鲁克的历史──你知道人们会说些什么。你要唱这首歌，他们会讨厌这首歌。你准备好了吗？’”

If they are, they have no illusions that they're paying for a chance at Rebecca Black-like fame with $5400 in cash and a firehose of online vitriol.

如果准备好了，她们心里就很清楚，她们是拿5400美元的现金换取像丽贝卡・布莱克一样出名的一个机会，还有网络上的冷嘲热讽。

And meanwhile, Wilson gets to write songs about whatever random thing he feels like, the more random the better. 'I wrote 'Chinese Food' because I love Chinese food,' says Wilson. 'There's a restaurant I go to, they have chicken wings, they have beef with broccoli, that's what I love. The song is based on my experience -- what I know about Chinese food. Yes, I know geishas are Japanese, but you can find Chinese restaurants in Japan! People say I'm squinting, well okay, I have small eyes. All this controversy, I didn't even think about it. The pissed off people saying I'm racist, the last person who wants to be racist is me.'

与此同时，威尔森开始凭感觉随意创作歌曲，越随意越好。威尔森说：“我写《中国菜》是因为我喜欢中国菜。有一个我常去的餐厅，他们有鸡翅，有西兰花牛肉，都是我喜欢吃的。这首歌就是根据我的经历写的──我所知道的中国菜。没错，我知道艺妓是日本的，但在日本也能找到中国菜馆！有人说我斜眼，好吧，我确实眼睛很小。所有这些争议，我根本不会去想。愤怒的人说我是种族歧视，而最不想有种族歧视的人就是我。”

What about the panda? 'In 'It's Thanksgiving,' I was a turkey, So in 'Chinese Food,' I felt I had to be an animal too,' says Wilson. 'And I didn't want to be a dragon, because in the video, I'm supposed to be the singer's imaginary friend. Pandas are cute. You could see a girl like Alison [Gold, 'Chinese Food''s singer] having an imaginary panda as a friend.'

那只熊猫是怎么回事？威尔森说：“在《感恩节》里我扮土鸡，所以在《中国菜》里我觉得也应该演个动物。我又不想扮龙，因为在视频里我应该是主唱想象中的朋友。熊猫很可爱，像艾莉森（戈尔德，《中国菜》的主唱）这样的女孩应该有一个想象中的熊猫做朋友。”

So 'Chinese Food' may be cringeworthy and culturally awkward. But if it is, it's only because it's been launched, unfiltered, directly from Wilson's fervid imagination. 'What I do comes from a different place,' he agrees. 'I don't think the way regular musicians think -- I think in a more dynamic way. I guess my ideas are pretty out there. But I know that if a big star like Lady Gaga put out a song like 'Chinese Food,' everyone would love it. When Patrice Wilson does it, everyone hates it.'

所以《中国菜》这首歌或许会让人不舒服，文化元素的安排又很拙劣。但如果真是这样，这只是因为它直接来自于威尔森的狂热想象，未经过任何的加工。他承认：“我所做的事情源自不同的角度，我的思维方式跟一般音乐人不同──我的想法更灵活多变。我的想法大概人们很熟悉了。但我知道，如果像蕾迪・卡卡(Lady Gaga)这样的大明星出一首《中国菜》这样的歌，大家都会喜欢的。而帕特里斯・威尔森出这样一首歌时，大家都会讨厌。”

The hate just makes him stronger. 'We're already planning our next song with Alison,' he says. It's a prequel to 'Chinese Food' -- very simple, very catchy, and all about me just being me.'

这种讨厌只会让他更强大。他说：“我们已经开始为艾莉森的下一首歌做准备。这首歌会是《中国菜》的前篇──非常简单和朗朗上口，而且就是原汁原味的我的风格。”

And regardless of how bad it is and what crazy thing it ends up being about, it's almost certain to be heard and talked about, just because Wilson is behind it. Which drives the music establishment up the wall.

无论歌有多烂，无论它最后变成了什么疯狂的玩意，几乎肯定会有人听，而且会成为热门话题，就是因为歌的背后是威尔森。这让音乐界抓狂。

'Whatever you may think of Patrice's songs, he is a firecracker up the a--s of the majors, who would like to just control everything with their pure corporate mentality,' says Clarence Jey. 'This once-a-year viral video he does, it makes the Sonys and Universals of the world crazy, because it's a reality check that music is no longer a big-label monopoly.'

克拉伦斯・杰伊说：“无论你怎么看待帕里斯的歌，他都是大唱片公司的一颗眼中钉，这些公司喜欢用他们纯粹的企业心态来控制一切。他每年做一个迅速走红的视频，这让索尼唱片和环球唱片这样的巨头抓狂，因为它证明音乐不再受大牌唱片公司的垄断了。”

That's a good enough reason for me to root Wilson on. Pass the duck sauce.

这个理由足够让我挺威尔森了。把鸭酱递给我。