44/876 was recorded in Jamaica and New York with Sting & Shaggy being joined by various musicians and writers including the legendary Robbie Shakespeare of Sly and Robbie, dancehall sensation Aidonia, Morgan Heritage, Branford Marsalis, Agent Sasco and Sting’s longtime guitarist, Dominic Miller as well as writers Taranchyla, Dwayne “iLL Wayno” Shippy, Shane Hoosong, Machine Gun Funk and Patexx. The sessions were produced in part by Sting International (“Oh, Carolina,” “Boombastic” and “It Wasn’t Me,”) and by Martin Kierszenbaum who has previously written/produced songs for Sting, Madonna and Lady Gaga. Sting International, Robert “Hitmixer” Orton, Sting International and Tony Lake mixed 44/876.

 

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Review from Associated Press by Mark Kennedy

The fact that Shaggy and Sting are teaming 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? Why not keep going and add Shakira, Sia, Slash and Seal?

Maybe one day, but put the snarkiness aside and enjoy this warm bromance between the Jamaican dancehall king and the cool, intellectual Englishman.

“44/876” - the title is a combo of the phone country codes for Sting’s native England and Shaggy’s Jamaica - makes sense as soon as you recall Sting’s liberal use of reggae rhythms as part of The Police.

It turns out there’s real chemistry between Shaggy, whose deep, thick cadences made “Boombastic” and “It Wasn’t Me” such beloved 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 - some might say curious - 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 first, title song smartly honors 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 stops by to play sax and Robbie Shakespeare helps on bass. Sting’s daughter, Eliot Sumner, gets a writing credit and sings on “Night Shift.”

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.

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Review from The Daily Mail by Adrian Thrills

Sting has sung with jazz musicians and rappers, written a musical about shipbuilding on his native Tyneside and released an album of Renaissance lute music. But his latest escapade - a set of Caribbean-themed songs with dancehall reggae star Shaggy - is his most improbable yet.

The record takes its title from the international dialling codes for the UK (44) and Jamaica (876) and is a sun-kissed mix of pop and reggae. 

After being introduced by Sting's manager, who used to work with Shaggy, the unlikely couple got together to record a duet, Don't Make Me Wait, and were so happy with the results that other songs soon followed.

The fruits of 'Shaggy and Sting inna combination' are sometimes rather gimmicky, but 44/876 avoids sounding like a vanity project by making the most of the pair's respective strengths: String's meticulous songwriting; deep-voiced Shaggy's spontaneity and flair.

The two are fairly evenly matched. Sting, 66, achieved global fame with The Police. Shaggy, 49, is a former US marine who moved from Jamaica to Brooklyn as a teenager. 

Having taken his stage name after a character in the TV cartoon Scooby-Doo, he has topped the UK chart four times with hits such as Boombastic and It Wasn't Me.

The duo's initial duet sets the tone: Don't Make Me Wait finds Shaggy playfully parading his lover man credentials. 'It didn't take me long to fall in love with your mind,' he sings.

Elsewhere, bassist Robbie Shakespeare and saxophonist Branford Marsalis contribute to a set of tuneful, good-natured songs that, despite Sting's thoughtful lyrics, refuse to take themselves too seriously.

Crooked Tree is a courtroom playlet that casts Shaggy as the Honourable Judge Burrell - his real name is Orville Burrell - and Sting as a contrite defendant. The Police-like Dreaming In The USA salutes a gallery of American cultural idols, including Elvis, Sinatra and Marilyn Monroe, before Shaggy delivers the damning kiss-off line: 'I await the day when we will all inhabit a better America.'

There are numbers on which Sting takes the lead. With its gentle flute and lively fret-work by the singer's touring guitarist Dominic Miller, 22nd Street could have come straight off a Sting solo project, with Shaggy's raspy patter an afterthought.

But the songs where Mr. Boombastic takes centre stage are the most entertaining. Waiting For The Break Of Day is a languid piano piece lamenting the 'falseness' of politicians. To Love And Be Loved is an unashamedly poppy track that finds Sting admitting he has 'two left feet' when it comes to dancing. Accompanied by fairground organ, it's a bubbly, Shaggy-directed paean to good times - and all the better for that.

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Review from Daily Telegraph by Neil McCormick

There is something about the combination of Sting and Shaggy that seems inherently ludicrous: Mr Boombastic Loverman meets Tantric Sex God in a pop/reggae pile up. These two swaggering old mononymous male stars seem to belong to different corners of the musical universe. Sting, 66, is rock royalty – a virtuoso musician and supreme singer-songwriter with intellectual pretensions, who dabbles in folk, classical and opera. Shaggy, 49, is an ebullient Jamaican toaster with a gritty voice and penchant for fruity innuendo.

At the suggestion of their shared management, Sting agreed to sing a hook on a Shaggy single, the sunny Don’t Make Me Wait, and the pair got on so well that the sessions expanded into a whole album of original songs.

The title track, 44/876 – named after the respective international dialling codes for Britain and Jamaica – commemorates their transatlantic friendship. Over a breezy Caribbean groove, Sting confesses that “the ghost of Bob Marley haunts me to this day”, while Shaggy adds enthusiastic interjections: “Big up the UK, man, yeah, bam bam!”

I’m tempted to say it is surprisingly good – yet why should we be surprised? They are both gifted, charismatic veteran musicians with very distinctive skills. The blend of Sting’s sweet, high tenor and top-tier songwriting with Shaggy’s earthy delivery and rhythmic bounce has an effortless appeal. Sting’s early success with the Police was rooted in reggae and it’s a flow that suits him well, even if his excruciating delivery of the phrase “positive vibration” is some of the dodgiest white patois heard since 10CC’s Dreadlock Holiday.

There’s a hefty dollop of cheese on poppier tracks. The way Sting drops in such lines as “as my good friend Shaggy says” brings to mind Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin hamming it up in Vegas. These kind of guest star combinations have become a feature of modern pop and it’s a nice reminder that the oldies can duet, too. The Shaggy-led Gotta Get Back My Baby is such a fantastically catchy pop song it is a pity it will most likely be relegated to the Radio 2 playlist. If Bruno Mars and Drake recorded the same track, there’d be no escaping it.

Musically, Sting does the heavy lifting, with Shaggy dipping in and out as wing man, proclaiming “biddy bong bong” as the mood takes him. But aside from the more obviously playful pop, there are songs with tough political and emotional edges. The brooding Waiting for the Break of Day puts Sting on a picket line: “When the laws are wicked / You’re forced to disobey.” Just One Lifetime twists Lewis Carroll’s The Walrus and the Carpenter into a nursery rhyme for the apocalypse. While 22nd Street sounds like a lost Gershwin classic given a lover’s rock twist. Crooked Tree is a dark, narrative folk song, with Shaggy voicing a hanging judge, while Sting pleads for clemency. Sad Trombone is a noirish jazz ballad built around audaciously overblown musical similes and metaphors. These songs are strong enough to fit anywhere into Sting’s impressive canon, delivered with an energy and focus that keeps his tendency to over-elaborate at bay.

What I like most is the sense that these two musicians are beyond caring about perceptions, simply determined to have fun.

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Review from Newsweek by Glenn Gamboa

The unlikely rock-reggae odd couple find a surprisingly sweet middle ground.

The musical partnership between Sting and Shaggy seems weird, not because of their musical styles, but because of their personal ones.

Sting has cultivated an oh-so-serious rock persona for decades, both in The Police and out of it, while Shaggy, who splits his time between Jamaica and Valley Stream, has painted himself - in America, at least - as a reggae prankster. How would these two big personalities work together?

Well, judging from their “44/876” album (A&M/Interscope), Sting and Shaggy could probably have benefited from a bit more disagreement. On “44/876,” named for the country codes for Sting’s native United Kingdom and Shaggy’s native Jamaica, they often sound deferential when a stronger blend of their styles would have worked better.

Their collaboration is strongest when Sting buys into Shaggy’s reggae-pop vibe, like on the playful “To Love and Be Loved” of the Bob Marley-influenced “Morning Is Coming.” The first single “Don’t Make Me Wait” kickstarted the partnership when Shaggy’s former A&R rep Martin Kierszenbaum played the song for Sting, whom he now manages. It works well because it’s essentially a Shaggy song, with its catchy, lilting chorus and gentle reggae groove. On the other end, “Waiting for the Break of Day” sounds like it could have come from Sting’s “Ten Summoner’s Tales,” enhanced by Shaggy’s toasting. They create something new on “Dreaming in the USA,” a love letter to America that combines Motown with Police-like guitar riffs that shows how crafty Sting and Shaggy really can be.

Where they run into problems is when Sting gets a little too wrapped up in clever imagery. On “Sad Trombone,” he goes from one metaphor to the next, while Shaggy’s straightforward contribution only draws more attention to lines about being “the butter to my toast.”

Sting and Shaggy have found a special connection on “44/876,” one that could blossom into something bigger in time.

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Review from The National by Adam Workman

Unlikely pairing of Sting and Shaggy dials up the spirit of Marley for some rays of pop-reggae - The unlikely duo make the sun shine on collaborative effort...

Seldom since the Wu-Tang Clan’s Method Man worked with Scottish bores Texas in the late 1990s (Say What You Want) have there been such a “huh?” music combo as this: Sting, the 66-year-old former Police frontman behind enduring hits Roxanne and Message in a Bottle; and Shaggy, the 49-year-old pop-reggae architect of, err, classic singles Boombastic and It Wasn’t Me.

The album title is the international dialling codes of the two artists’ respective countries, and their musical influences similarly meet in the middle – although, while Sting’s familiar tones are tinged with occasional disconcerting Jamaican twangs, Shaggy goes even farther into his patois without a hint of English influence. It’s easy to forget that Sting has dabbled in reggae before, although not as much as Shaggy’s confusingly named producer, Sting International, who handles much of the behind-the-desk work on 44/876.

Sting claims on the opening title track that “the ghost of Bob Marley” haunts him “to this day” – and it does hint at the album’s spirit, which evokes some of the reggae pioneer’s sunniest moments, alongside infrequent darker diversions such as courtroom lament Crooked Tree.

It’s an album that the world wouldn’t have missed were it never conceived, but given that it does exist, the results could have been a lot worse – and that even extends to an unexpected cover of West End show tune Love Changes Everything.

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Review from USA Today by Maeve McDermott

Shaggy and Sting's collaborative album '44/876' is a baffling joy...

For the first minute of 44/876, the new collaborative album from Shaggy and Sting that is hotly anticipated if only for its ‘WTF’ novelty, it sounds like the two musicians may just pull this thing off. 44/876 (out Friday) opens with its title track, beginning with a sunny verse from Shaggy celebrating his island roots over charmingly of-the-moment tropical-pop beats, hinting that the joining of forces between the English rocker and the Jamaican dancehall star may not be a total bust.

Then, Sting starts singing.

“It shakes me to my soul with a positive vibration, I start dreaming of Jamaica, the Caribbean nation,” he begins, the clunkiest possible introduction to the album’s ‘Sting does reggae!’ concept, which only gets more amusing when he invokes “the ghost of Bob Marley that haunts me to this day" with all the nuance of a clueless tourist getting his hair cornrowed during an island holiday.

It’s a hilariously unfortunate introduction to an album that certainly has its bright spots. Morning is Coming, the album’s second track, is a better introduction to Sting’s relative talents on 44/876, his lilting vocals a better match for the song’s gentle roots reggae. Of course, Sting is no rookie when it comes to the sounds of Jamaica, drawing from reggae and ska over the course of his career with the Police and in his solo works.

His pairing with Shaggy, best known for his 2000s run of singles including the Steve Miller-interpolating hit Angel and the novelty classic It Wasn’t Me, works best when both singers meet one another halfway between their respective comfort zones, rather than step too far into one another’s worlds. That works both ways, as heard on Shaggy’s clunky attempts to match Sting’s cadences on the poppier Gotta Get Back My Baby.

The album’s lighthearted songwriting verges on treacly at points, mostly when Sting goes on storytelling tangents, jauntily quoting Lewis Carroll on Just One Lifetime - “The time has come, Shaggy said, to talk of many things” - and roleplaying a prisoner in front of Shaggy’s judge on Crooked Tree, before singing about “making the sweetest love” to a woman he nicknames “Sad Trombone” on the song of the same name.

He also seems quite keen to make his political opinions known, dedicating his first verse on 44/876 to complaining about how the “politics of this country is getting to me,” like a party guest determined to harsh the buzz with politics talk.

Save for Sting’s more meandering moments, the album is mostly enjoyable, from its pleasant lead single Don’t Make Me Wait to Dreaming in the U.S.A, the two singers’ Springsteen-in-Jamaica ode to the American dream. 44/876 may get its name from the phone country codes for the artists’ two home countries, England and Jamaica, but there’s something distinctly American-feeling about the album, which sees both its creators as ex-pats, with Shaggy pining for his island home and Sting unimpressed with the politics of Britain today.

Plus, only in America could this gonzo pairing of two stars at various levels of old geezer-dom, truly make sense. And while the world wasn’t exactly clamoring for this album to exist, the end product is more lucid than many likely expected. If anything, 44/876 is proof that both Shaggy and Sting can keep evolving into the later era of their careers, and maintaining a sense of humor about it in the process.