DARIEN — Lil Wayne has fulfilled the definition of “ubiquitous” over the past two years.

He has been everywhere, twice topping the charts with his own albums, and offering more cameos to other artists than is healthy for a single man. Blender Magazine pondered, “Has Lil Wayne made the album of the year?” The Grammys found the diminutive rapper to be more than worthy of a statue or two. (Make that four, total.) Artistic merit is not likely to have been a consideration, but the fun factor certainly was. Giving Wayne a Grammy is not unlike granting Van Halen’s David Lee Roth a Nobel Peace Prize.

Hip-hop is not necessarily about what traditionalists consider music, anyway. Most of the artists in the genre are quite content to elevate rhythm to King status, kicking melody and harmony out the door with a purposeful jolt to the backside. That can be extremely cool, when it’s done well and when the text that has been pushed to the forefront is worth the investment of the listener. Hiphop hasn’t truly fulfilled this mandate, at least on the commercial mainstream level, for the better part of a decade, though. Lil Wayne didn’t challenge this tendency, but rather, cash in on it.

That said, Thursday’s show had its moments. All of them came when Lil Wayne was on the stage; the opening sets from Young Jeezy, Soulja Boy Tell ’Em and Jeremih did little other than underscore the vacuousness at the heart of contemporary hip-hop. Bad rapping, no song to speak of and a pointless glorification of violence seemed to be the order of the day, particularly during Young Jeezy’s set.

Lights! Smoke! Explosions! Massive high-def video screens! Gravity-defying pants! Lil Wayne had it all.

Taking the stage following an introductory video montage that posed the man’s mug against signs suggesting he was “America’s Most Wanted,” Lil Wayne got right down to business.

Backed throughout by a real-time, human-based band — this is a bigger deal than it might seem — Wayne got down and dirty quickly. Making plain the template for the evening, the rapper got right into his Jamaican dancehallbased routine, his guttural rhythmic motifs recalling Yellowman much more so than, say, Jay Z.

The taut, circular rhythmic motifs of the Jamiacan “toasting”-based form of rap proved to be Wayne’s bread and butter. Whenever he strayed from this strain, his set faltered. Truth be told, Wayne is not much of a rapper in the American sense of the idiom — his rhymes are not much to brag about, his flow is slow and soggy, and he lacks the rapid-fire poetics of the best MCs on both coasts. Give him a dancehall groove, though, and he shines, his gnarly phrasing and guttural tone finding a comfortable home in the ready-made rhythms of the form.

Throughout the show, an ominous — and frankly annoying — over-use of low end rattled the tent and crushed the cranium. This did little other than obfuscate the efforts of the bass player, who had to deal with the looped synth lines, fighting against them rather than embracing them to serve the groove. No one seemed to be too upset about this.

Most of the set stuck close to dancehall and employed tried-and-true rock motifs below the vocal. In essence, Wayne is Kid Rock, minus the Skynyrd. He raps mostly over heavy guitars and pop-based motifs.

So “Kush” went down gangbusters with the assembled, who didn’t appear to clock the fact that it sounded an awful lot like Diddy’s dreadful appropriation of Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir,” and “Go DJ” sounded like Gregory Isaacs fronting House Of Pain.

“Phone Home” made me want to, though the urge was quelled; “My Life” flirted with gospel but ended up going home with Mariah Carey. All of this was pulled off with eminent professionalism and a not-to-be-undervalued sense of pacing and tension/ release.

Six months ago, it is doubtful that Lil Wayne would have performed to a three-quarters full venue. But the current trajectory of pop stardom is more like an inverse “V” than a long, slow, sloping curve, and perhaps Lil Wayne’s star is already descending.

Regardless, he kicked it, and hard, on Thursday. Not deep, ever, but entertaining nonetheless.

REVIEW

WHO: Lil’ Wayne with Young Jeezy, Soulja Boy Tell ’Em and Drake

WHEN: Thursday night

WHERE: Darien Lake Performing Arts Center