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‘The Voice’ contestant earned a rare comparison to Michael Bublé — but it still wasn’t enough

Darius J exits ‘The Voice’ despite delivering a soulful OutKast cover in playoffs

'The Voice' has a unique personality amongst all its other contemporaries, where the show known for its four-chair turn puts the judges in the limelight. The Blind Auditions are the main draw of the show, where the judges select the contestants by listening to just their 'voice.' The judges then continue to pitch themselves to the contestant, after which the contestant can select which team they would want to be in. Following this are the Battle Rounds and Knockouts. Knockouts, as the name suggests, is the round with the majority of the eliminations. The remaining contestants then progress to the next round, i.e., the playoffs.

The four judges have five contestants in each judge's team, with the total number of contestants being 20. That said, the playoff round reduces the five artists per team to two, which means the large number of 20 gets reduced to a measly eight. As 'The Voice' season 27 began in full force, Darius J, an artist with one of the most unique voices on the show, was sadly eliminated. Darius performed his energetic rendition of 'Hey Ya' by OutKast, as reported by Entertainment Weekly, which had the judges smiling and bobbing their heads to the tune of OutKast.

Darius J had previously been stolen from Team Adam by Kelsea Ballerini, as she stated, "I'm like a moth to a flame with you ... I'm just so attracted to your artistry. And I wish that I could jump through all the TVs right now and just watch everyone fall in love with you," she said. "You just make everyone feel like a warm hug." Even Adam Levine had nothing but praise for Darius' playoff performance: "There's only one Darius J ... It was so different and so cool. It was almost like 'Bublé Ya!' I'm just really proud of you, man. Excellent job tonight, dude."

However, despite all the praise, Darius J was not advanced to the next round, as Ballerini chose to advance Iris Herrera and Alanna Lynise, as reported by Collider. Iris performed her rendition of 'White Horse' by Chris Stapleton while Alanna sang 'Nobody Gets Me' by SZA. Clearly, the winning duo's choice of song was from a more current landscape of music compared to Darius' iconic pick of OutKast from 2003.

While Darius' journey with 'The Voice' has come to a close here, the Florida native's voice is quite unique, and it's only time before fans will get to see more of him as he navigates his solo career. He even wrote a heartfelt message to the contestants moving forward as he wrote in an Instagram post, "Starting 5. Shout out to @alannalynise and @iris.herreraa for completely crushing it and making it to the top 8 to represent team Kelsea in the lives."