THURSDAY

While music nerds hotly debate whether the Magnetic Fields’ Stephin Merritt is a racist because he doesn’t like enough black music and confessed last month at a pop-music conference that he digs “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah,” a much weightier question gathers dust in the corner: Whatever happened to the wigger? To wit, the L. Ron wigger, Beck, or the white-boy DJs such as Shadow, Diplo, and RJD2 whom the geeks at Merritt’s throat so adore. Or last year’s biggie, Edan, whose brilliant soul-psych collage, Beauty and the Beast, landed him on the cover of the Wire despite the fact that he’s a white kid from Beantown. Thankfully, Edan’s not in this for the angst or someone’s grad thesis. He knows the way to any hopelessly conflicted music writer’s heart: throw out a roll call of boldface hip-hop names so we know he knows, get guests such as Mr. Lif to drop a few verses, and proceed directly to fucked-up beats and psychedelic samples that drape across the songs like ivy. It sounds exactly like what you’d expect from a 20-something who grew up loving Hendrix and Prince Paul. So while we wait for Merritt’s hip-hop answer song to New Yorker music critic Sasha Frere-Jones and blogger/gadfly Jessica Hopper (who stomped out of a Merritt panel discussion), we can at least see one white boy keeping it real at 8 p.m. Thursday, June 1, when Edan plays with Prefuse 73 and Dagha at the 9:30 Club, 815 V St. NW. $15. (202) 393-0930. (Jason Cherkis)