This election year, the Democrats should be paying attention to Roc-A-Fella’s golden-boy song doctor. In a game still polarized between haters and players, the producer-turned-rapper Kanye West has leapt to stardom with a third-way platform: the self-proclaimed "first nigga with a Benz and a backpack" went to university but didn’t graduate, and though his cardigan-and-knapsack wardrobe keeps his thugometer reading well below 50-Cent’s, he produced a hit while rhyming through a wired-shut jaw, the result of a near-death car accident. He’s become the new king of the recycled pop hook, but he still found time between his work for Jay-Z and Ludacris to hang his trademark classic-soul magic on Alicia Keys’s "You Don’t Know My Name." His signature sound — an R&B sample pitched to chipmunk speed — has been all over the radio, most recently on speed-rap phenom Twista’s hyperkinetic "Slow Jamz." And this week he’ll take his message to the people of New England with gigs at Toad’s Place (203-562-5589) in New Haven on Monday and the Palladium (800-477-6849) in Worcester on Tuesday, with Dilated Peoples opening both dates.

Not long ago, the New York Times used West to compare the phenomenon of the producer/rapper — see also Pharrell Williams, sort of — to the ’70s singer-songwriter movement. There might be something to this shared sensibility: MTV recently revealed that West and Williams are big fans of adult-contemporary throwback John Mayer. And here we just thought he was a cute Dave Matthews knockoff. Mayer is at the Dunkin’ Donuts Center (401-331-6700) in Providence on Saturday.

In these parts, screamo’s old news: Cave In perfected it back in 1999 on their debut single, "Crossbearer," by lacing Converge-grade cacophony with a fleeting Sunny Day hook. Four years later, the extremo class of 2003 took it to the airwaves. And what’s not to like? Poison the Well’s Atlantic debut, You Come Before You, imagined what Deftones would sound like with Rivers Cuomo writing the choruses; their tour with radio faves Thrice hits Lupo’s at the Strand (401-331-5876) in Providence tonight (March 18) and a sold-out Axis (617-262-2437) in Boston on Friday. From Autumn to Ashes improved on the general idea by proposing specialization: one guy for the cookie-monster hardcore vocals, another for the whiny, pretty stuff. (They also tithe one song per album to a female singer — the "Autumn" of their moniker — who inevitably upstages the boys.) They’re on a tour with Hopesfall, whose new The Satellite Years (Trustkill) picks up where the interstellar prog-metal vibe of Cave In’s Jupiter left off. Both bands hit the Palladium on Friday and Ushuaia (207-866-7700) in Orono, Maine, on Saturday.

Elsewhere, George Clinton and Parliament/Funkadelic follow up their ecstatic OutKast-abetted Grammy performance with gigs on Friday at the State Theater (207-780-8265) in Portland and Saturday at the Palladium. And Neil Young and Crazy Horse bring their not-so-idyllic Greendale (Reprise) to the Mullins Center (413-545-0505) in Amherst on Sunday.