10 Years Later, Paxton Ingram Returns to The Voice

It’s been a decade since a fresh-faced Paxton Ingram stepped up to the mic to audition on a TV show under conditions that would bring even the most seasoned performers to their knees. In front of him was a modest, supportive studio audience, but his focus was on the four star judges deciding his fate: Christina Aguilera, Adam Levine, Pharrell, and Blake Shelton. Per the show’s format, they all sat with their backs to him, listening and scrutinizing his vocals as another 13 million people watched at home.

You wouldn’t know the stakes were so high if you were only judging by the confidence with which his vocals glided over his soulful cover of Robyn’s “Dancing on My Own” during his blind audition on The Voice. But when three judges — Levine, Pharrell, and Shelton — slammed on buttons to spin their chairs and face him, they also set in motion what would be the next ten years of the Miami artist’s creative career, one that’s included singing, writing, and choreographing for some of today’s biggest artists.

With that experience under his belt, Ingram, who now goes by his mononymous artist name, Pxtn, is returning to the show for the semifinal and finale of its Battle of Champions season, currently airing Monday and Tuesday nights on NBC.

Though he can’t share many details ahead of his appearances on the April 13 and 14 episodes, Pxtn says The Voice was instrumental in connecting him with the superstar artists he works with today, including Karol G, Pitbull, Maluma, Ozuna, Myke Towers, Natti Natasha, and Aly Brooke, formerly of Fifth Harmony, among others.

Dancing on His Own

“After I did The Voice, different directors and creative directors from here knew that I was also a dancer, and the fact that I was an artist was just the cherry on top,” Pxtn tells New Times. “They were like, ‘You speak the same language as an artist. You would understand an artist.’ They felt more comfortable putting me in rooms with other artists to help them navigate whatever vision they had.”

He had to navigate his own vision after The Voice, too. In the first couple of years after his stint on the show, he learned that the televised competition helped with visibility and connections, but some viewers were fans of The Voice itself rather than the individual artists who competed on it. That realization led to a slight pivot; one of many for the independent artist.

“I started to just get this feeling of familiarity,” he says of leaning back into dance, another lifelong passion. “It just really allowed me to let go. And as I let go into it, just not wanting anything in return, it blessed me with the opportunity to be a choreographer for other artists.”

Being in Miami also helped. Pxtn says that when he first left the show, all the available work was in Los Angeles and New York. “…If I’m here in Miami, I’m not in the middle of the pop writers,” he told New Times back in 2016, fresh off his run on primetime. “If I’m in L.A., I’m in the middle of it.”

That’s changed — drastically.

“I think [Miami has] some of the most talented artists, period. In the world. People here are just as hungry, and just as talented, and just as gifted as the next anywhere else. Just this past year, three of my students that I taught as a dancer were on the Super Bowl with Bad Bunny.”

Pxtn says there’s a reason his dancers are getting booked on the world’s biggest stages: Miami talent sticks out. “Whenever dancers move to L.A. or New York, there’s like this sauce to them. There’s this thing on them that people recognize. They’re like, ‘You must be from Miami.’ And nine times out of ten, when they make those moves, they win.”

Florida Boy

The singer/songwriter is going all in on repping his home with his next album, Florida Boy, due out in August. Its lead single, the soulful R&B track “Hurricane Season,” addresses the self-doubt he’s experienced at times in the decade since his national debut.

“Got reruns of my younger days playing loud inside my head,” he sings. “It’s hurricane season here in my mind/Everyone’s changing while I’m stuck behind/I swear I’m trying, but I’m losing time.”

You don’t need to have sung in front of millions of people for three months to relate to the sentiment of comparison, one we all face in the era of highlight reels delivered straight from our pockets to our hands to our eyeballs to our subconscious.

But as it turns out, the “rerun” line is a bit more personal — and literal — than Pxtn might’ve intended.

“I watch it sometimes,” he tells New Times of his season of The Voice. “I have some of the episodes, so I’ll just go out and watch a few episodes and be like, ‘Yeah, I am him. I did that, I did that. And I ate it up. Lock in, let’s go.'”

He lets out a self-conscious laugh. “I’ve never told anyone that.”

Pxtn on The Voice. 9 p.m. Monday, April 13, and Tuesday, April 14, on NBC.