Earlier this year I found an artist called Ginger Root. His real name is Cameron Lew and has started his music career in 2017. He has 7 Albums called Rikki from 2020, Mahjong Room from 2018, Toaster_music v1, v2, and v3 from 2017-2020, and Spotlight People from 2017. That isn’t all he has thought he has several EPs and Singles to his name. With his eps, he has 3, Weather/Slump which came out in 2019, City Slicker (Which is my favorite) came out in 2021, then lastly Nisemono which came out this year in 2022. There are 18 singles but only 6 of them aren’t on any of his albums or eps. With all of these albums and other types of music, he doesn’t seem like he is going to stop any time soon.  I know this because he just went on tour all over the area that is left of the Mississippi and even into Canada. When it was in town I went and I will talk about the atmosphere there. The funny thing is that he has over 1 million listeners which shows that there are people besides me that listen to him

The story of my finding the man we call Ginger Root as I was scrolling through Tik Tok in March of this year he was talking about he made a set for his song “Lorreta”.  I watched that video and I enjoyed the song. From then to now I have seen several videos about new songs such as “Holy Hell”, “Loneliness”, and “Over The Hill” which then became the Nisemono album. Before that album was released I started listening to some of his earlier albums such as Rikki, City Slicker, and Mahjong Room. As you can tell I haven’t listened to everything he has made but that concert, showed me songs that I haven’t listened to. Now I know that I still have things that I need to explore about him.

Now that you know my story, let’s go in-depth into what I think about the music I have heard.

The first album/ep I listened was City Slicker and here are my thoughts on him. This Ep only was ~19 minutes long which surprised me because for most of the year I was listening to longer albums between 30 minutes to an hour long. Having this short time it was a pallet cleanser and just something I can listen to for a short period. Not being a long album means there are not a lot of songs in there. There are only six songs to listen to but they are all 10/10s. The song names in order of the album are “Fly Too”, “Loretta”, “Neighbor”, “Juban District”, “City Slicker”, and lastly, there is “Entertainment”. Out of these six, I could pick my favorite which would be Loretta because of the descending notes at the being or the guitar having a nice rift throughout the song or it could be the keyboard/saxophone solo in the middle. After that, I can’t pick a solid second place because they all sound similar but different at the same time. With every song, there are the same-ish keys and speed to the song but he does something with every song. He does that as well with the Nisemono album as well. I say this is an album that you can just listen to when you are working that is very light so you won’t notice it but you will find yourself singing along to the songs.

My favorite album by him is named Rikki. This album is ~38 minutes which is much longer than the City Slicker ep. But that shows the difference between an ep and an actual album. In these 38 minutes of music, there are 11 songs ranging from 2.22 minutes and 4.11 minutes. I enjoy all the pieces that are there but the one that I will listen to the most is the song ‘Le Chateau’. Besides his Korean-type music, this song has more of a French tone with french words thrown in and at the end of the song, there are two people having a conversation in french. I don’t have a real opinion of this piece in its good or bad but I think it is a good thing to listen to when you show off his music to other people. I do respect this album because this is something that gives you what he does in his music and it has given a new group of people to follow his work.

When I attended his concert in early November it was at the Marquis Theater. This was in downtown Denver which was a hike to get there and to get home. That wasn’t the night just going there and coming home but once I got there we waited in a line for 20 to 30 minutes before the show started and then it took a while for the opener to come out. I was not sure who she was but her music was really good with lots of base and keyboard but she was the only one doing all of it. After that, the concert started and the whole thing was amazing. Every song that I knew I awkwardly sang to the song songs and recorded on my phone. Sometimes between songs, he would play clips from his music videos to introduce the songs. At the beginning of the concert, he had a bit where he got water from the town he was in and talked about it for a while.  Toward the middle, he talked to the audience and played songs that were not his own such as ‘Tank!’ or songs like that with no lyrics at all. Then it returned to what was happening for the rest of the concert with him signing his own songs.  Surprisingly he went off stage and then came back for an encore. By then when left and got some merch from him. On the way home my friend was still stunned by what just happened.

In my opinion, I believe that Ginger Root is an amazing artist and after this advent, I have gotten others to listen to him as well. Whoever is reading this should listen to him because he might change the way you do music.