The hip-hop event of the summer comes to the Tweeter Center (617-931-2000) in Mansfield this Friday when 50 Cent graduates from da club to da arena as part of a megastar bill featuring Jay-Z, Missy Elliott, Busta Rhymes, and Fabolous. Neil Young arrives at the Tweeter with Lucinda Williams (see " State of the Art, " ) on Tuesday, followed close-on by his old Mirror Ball pals Pearl Jam, who play a pair of sold-out gigs with British punk godfathers the Buzzcocks on Wednesday and Thursday. If you don’t have PJ tickets, take heart: they’ve added a third show at the Tweeter on July 11 with Sleater-Kinney opening.

Just 18 months ago, you could’ve seen Norah Jones tackling a weekend at Scullers without even the benefit of a drummer. You already know the rest of the story: beguiling, country-tinged jazz ingénue walks off with Grammys, steals nation’s heart. When she hits the sold-out FleetBoston Pavilion (617-931-2000) in Boston on Saturday, as part of her first big jaunt behind her Arif Mardin–produced debut smash, Come Away with Me (Blue Note), she’ll be joined by alterna-country gal Gillian Welch, whose new Soul Journey (Acony) was released earlier this month. The pair also play the Oakdale Theatre (203-265-1501) in Wallingford, Connecticut, on Sunday, after which Welch continues on to Higher Ground (802-654-8888) in Winooski, Vermont, on Tuesday and the State Theatre (207-780-8265) in Portland on Wednesday.

Serious metalheads have been in training for weeks to get ready for next week’s big Metallibash in Foxborough. This week’s workout kicks off with hard-rock/hardcore crossover demons Suicide Note, tonight (Thursday, June 26) at Pa’s Lounge (617-776-1557) in Somerville and Friday at the Met Café (401-861-2142) in Providence. Former Sleep guitarist Matt Pike’s grizzly doom band High on Fire terrorize the Linwood (617-267-8644) in Boston on Friday and the Living Room (401-521-5200) in Providence on Saturday. The Chinese Stars, a new outfit cobbled together from the remains of Providence post-punk rat bastards Six Finger Satellite and Arab on Radar, open both dates. The move from Texas to Clinton, Massachusetts, has not dulled the edge of the human meatgrinder (not the wrestler) known as Steve Austin; Today Is the Day, his band of chainsaw-grind techno-boogie madmen, chomp their way to the El-N-Gee (860-437-3800) in New London, Connecticut, on Saturday and the Middle East (617-864-EAST) in Cambridge on Sunday. Meanwhile, Swede thrash revivalists In Flames, who kept Master of Puppets–style speed metal in fashion during the lean Load/Reload years, are back with a new EP, Trigger (Nuclear Blast), and on Saturday, less than a week after sharing a Madrid stage with Metallica themselves, they play the Palladium (800-477-6849) in Worcester.