Ashanti struts on stage and takes over the Wonderjam at the Shrine

Stardom comes easily for some singers, if not always for the same reasons. So while Ashanti is no threat creatively to such distinctive soul artists as Alicia Keys and India.Arie, she still carries herself on stage like she belongs there. And she does.

Ashanti’s first solo set in Los Angeles was the high point in Friday’s Hot 92 Winter Wonderjam at the Shrine Auditorium, which also included sets by Keith Sweat, Midnight Star and Rose Royce.

There was real power and personality in Ashanti’s young voice, both light and sultry, reaching far beyond the limitations of her material. She was bright and playful if not unique. During the song “What’s Luv” (her hit with Fat Joe), Ashanti vamped across the stage in a short skirt, swinging her hips, pointing to fans in the crowd while declaring, “It’s definitely all the way live out here.”

It was a fire Ashanti will need for an accelerating career she said had her playing another concert earlier the same day in New York City. She sang to pre-programmed backing tracks from DJ B-Lyse, who also offered an occasional grunt or cheer from beneath a hooded Celtics jacket. But the prefab sounds were surprisingly full-bodied.

Many songs seemed abbreviated, ending abruptly and rolling right into the next one, as if Ashanti were trying to fit her entire repertoire into a short set. But she made them count with humor and attitude, explaining to cheers that her hit “Foolish” was about undependable men: “They got us ladies doing crazy things!”

Top-billed Keith Sweat is deep into his own multi-platinum career, a rigid lover-man riding waves of soothing, innocuous sound, vaguely soulful and with a thin layer of romance. On Friday the singer fed off the energy of his four-piece band, dancing across the stage in baggy leather pants, repeatedly grabbing his crotch like he meant it.

Sweat has turned to a more danceable sound recently, but it’s a minor adjustment to the same formula: music of manufactured feeling, with nothing truly at stake, emotional or otherwise.

The crowd reaction was virtually as strong for Midnight Star, even if the band still looks and sounds like an ‘80s R&B; act. That wasn’t the genre’s best decade, but the veteran act still turned its danceable funk, “slow jams” and cartoonish keyboards into a party worth having.