Idol Chatter & Voice Views

Rayshun LaMarr of The Voice Season 14. (NBC Photo)

His background: He’s been part of a corporate and wedding band called Sound Connection and says he’s traveled all over the world with the group. “Right as things started to pick up for me and the band,” Rayshun says he started feeling ill. He was diagnosed with lymphoma and multicentric Castleman’s disease, a rare genetic disorder. He battled illness for two years, lost his hearing and his voice and underwent chemo treatments. Rayshun is now cancer free, but said it took 10 months for his hearing to come back. As for his audition song, Rayshun said “this song is the epitome of my life. Keep believing in yourself. Keep believing in great things and great things will happen.”

What the show didn’t show:

* His full name is Rayshun LaMarr Purefoy, a North Carolina native and resident of the D.C. suburbs. He describes himself as a singer, songwriter and actor on Twitter.

* He’s been active professionally for about 13 years, stretching back to his days in Chapel Hill, N.C.

* Back in 2008, he released a pair of songs — the catchy, reggae-flavored “Gypsy Dream” and a ballad called “Take It.”

* In a YouTube interview, Rayshun says his biggest musical influences include Ella Fitzgerald and John Legend.

* In the same interview, he says he’s worked with several well-known artists, including Ledici and Regina Belle.

* With Sound Connection, a 10-piece party band, he was performing as one of four lead vocalists. You can check out some of their performances on his YouTube channel. Below is Rayshun singing “Don’t Stop Believing” in rehearsal.

* Last year, he played the lead role in a production of “Fool in Love: The Frankie Lymon Story” about the pop and doo-wop singing sensation — best known for the song “Why Do Fools Fall in Love” — who died of an overdose in 1968 at age 25 .

* In 2015, on the 150th anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination, he sang and performed in “Freedom’s Song: Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War” at Ford’s Theater in D.C. — yep, the very venue in which John Wilkes Booth shot the 16th president.

On picking Adam: “I wanted somebody that was not just going to praise me, but just give me some criticism about my performances because at the end of the day, I want to grow. So with him critiquing me right at that moment made me understand that ‘okay, he’s just not going to beat me with the, hey, you’re great or you’re whatever, but he’s going to also correct me when I’m wrong.’ I love constructive criticism and that’s pretty much what got me right there.”

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