The first time electric dance music producer, DJ and songwriter Wesley Pentz — stage name Diplo — played in Honolulu in 2009, Diplo wasn’t quite a brand yet, but he was at the outset of what has become a perpetual world tour, jetting from all-night “baile funk favela” parties in Rio de Janeiro to house parties in Los Angeles to casino club ragers in Las Vegas, alighting on club scenes everywhere in between.

He’d already released a solo album, left his job as a teacher, produced hits for M.I.A. and created the record label Mad Decent, based in his hometown of Philadelphia. The month before, he and fellow DJ Switch collaborated on an album using the name Major Lazer titled “Guns Don’t Kill People … Lazers Do.” The rapid snare drums, horse whinnying, cellphone sounds and synth of the songs “Hold the Line” and “Pon de Floor” were the manic anthems of a post-economic-meltdown party scene. In the pre-Instagram era, most hands were in the air instead of holding phones. Ten minutes into his Honolulu set, every square foot of the Chinatown club was a dance floor, and even the most prudish partygoers shed all but the most essential clothing, partying hard to the sound of the near future.

Music producers are, by definition, collaborators. But unlike the intentionally unnamed studio producers who create most American pop music, Diplo has taken this collective approach on the road. His millions of followers on all forms of social media have made him a bona fide 21st-century rock star, one of a handful of international touring DJs who run the scene. Through it all, he’s retained an interest in street-level music, whether from Jamaica, Brazil or the clubs of Miami.

A year after the release of “Pon de Floor,” the track was sampled on the song “Run the World (Girls)” by Beyonce. In 2012, an Australian nonprofit he co-created with Sydney DJs Nina Agzarian and Andrew Levins, Heaps Decent, produced songs promoting Australian indigenous club music.

Over the past five years, he’s produced chart-topping remixes for Bruno Mars, Shakira, Usher, Madonna, Justin Bieber and the list goes on. In 2012 and again this year, he was nominated for a Producer of the Year Grammy — and in 2016, the sheer force of his career may propel him to a win. The success of his remixes across the pop music spectrum inspired Billboard Magazine to call his a “Midas touch” in a cover story last year.

DIPLO never settled, or seems to have touched down. While knocking out club bangers for other artists, Diplo became an introducer (as opposed to an appropriator) of modern cultural phenomena. In 2012, he produced “Express Yourself” with Nicky Da B, a New Orleans bounce artist, which introduced the world to the glory of twerking. In 2013, Mad Decent released the song “Harlem Shake,” which became a global internet meme, with everyone from the Miami Heat to guys at the auto body shop making their own club scene videos replete with hilarious cutaways as the bass line drops. This year, again, he is nominated for the producer-of-the-year Grammy.

Though electronic dance music has been a staple of popular music since the late 1970s, in the past five years it became the sound of the modern era — on ringtones, the radio, TV commercials, yoga sculpt classes, the grocery store. Diplo’s career has tracked that ascendance in festival-headlining tours, collaborative albums and constant touring.

There’s no such thing as a “Diplo sound” because of the nature of modern EDM music: It’s a mash-up of trap, baile funk, house, techno, reggaeton, moombahton — whatever is needed to get the dance floor popping. Modern EDM DJs have proved that the laptop computer, only recently a piece of musical equipment to be derided, is often the only thing needed.

The zenith of the Diplo sound, if there is one, hit the airwaves this past summer, voiced by former teen idol Bieber. In 2013, Diplo formed a sort of EDM DJ super duo as a side project with Skrillex, a DJ with a similarly massive following. Their collaboration, Jack U, performed at the Ultra Music Festival Miami in 2014, and crafted a studio album featuring 2 Chainz, Missy Elliot and a host of friends the DJs have met over the years. But it’s the song “Where Are U Now,” the last on the album, that has taken over the airwaves.

Last year, Bieber was the butt of jokes about wasted talent and bad decisions — another teen idol who failed to make the transition to adult audiences. Over emails and while touring the world, Jack U remixed a slow track of Bieber’s, and created a trill earworm that has made the song famous and may be with us for years: the “dolphin,” which is in fact Bieber’s vocal that has been chopped, distorted, and equalized to the point of being an instrumental chorus. When Bieber performed it with Jack U at a festival during the summer, it was the first time the 21-year-old had made an adult audience scream.

Seeing Diplo in concert now isn’t the same as in 2009, before EDM music truly took over the world. Along with the sounds he produces, Diplo has become ubiquitous to the point of self-parody, though no less fun. His 2014 collection of singles and mixes with other DJs is titled “Random White Dude Be Everywhere,” with the album cover his Twitter profile picture. Under the Followers tab, it read “7.046 BILLION.” That’s the human population of Earth.