REVIEW
STING & SHAGGY 44/876 A&M/Interscope Records
The fact Shaggy and Sting teamed up on a CD does, admittedly, sound like a gimmick. Why are these two very different artists together? Because they happen to be known by a single name?
Put the snarkiness aside and enjoy this warm bromance between the Jamaican dance hall king and the cool, intellectual Englishman.
44/876 makes sense as soon as you recall Sting ’s liberal use of reggae rhythms as part of The Police.
There’s real chemistry between Shaggy, whose deep, thick cadences made Boombastic and It Wasn’t Me hits, and Sting ’s flexible, honeyed voice. The duo helped write every song on the 12-track album and their collaboration has triggered some interesting songwriting, including lifted poetry from Lewis Carroll for Just One Lifetime and some role-playing (Shaggy portrays a judge and Sting a defendant on the innovative Crooked Tree).
The title track honours Bob Marley — Sting says Marley’s ghost “haunts me to this day/ There’s a spiritual truth in the words of his song” — as a way of inoculating everyone for this quirky offering. Then it’s off to more trop-hop on this sunny Caribbean jaunt.
There’s the pro-immigrant, Motown-inflected Dreaming in the U.S.A. where Shaggy, a former U.S. Marine, notes he defended the nation. That adds weight to his statement: “I await the day when we will all inhabit a better America.”
Sting, for his part, seems fed up with Britain: “The politics of this country are getting to me,” he sings in one song. Then in the slinky standout Waiting for the Break of Day, he hits again: “You see some politicians/ You hear the things they say/ You hear the falseness in their positions.”
Branford Marsalis plays sax and Robbie Shakespeare helps on bass. Sting ’s daughter, Eliot Sumner, gets a writing credit and sings on Night Shift. The band Morgan Heritage is also featured.
You soon realize that Sting and Shaggy need each other, nowhere more so than on 22nd Street, which is like a rejected cut from The Dream of the Blue Turtles until Sting’s delicate china shop is entered by Shaggy and his bearish voice.
The album’s first single, Don’t Make Me Wait, a sway-inducing pop song with a reggae sheen, turns out to be only a taste of what these men can bring, their two vocal and musical styles melding into something as delicious as a plate of jerk chicken washed down with a cold beer.