unexpected pairings

Sting and Shaggy Made a Reggae Album Together and, Quite Frankly, What Took So Long?

News you didn’t know you needed. Photo: Patrick McMullan/Patrick McMullan via Getty Image

Today in sentences I could only dream of writing, Shaggy and Sting have recorded a reggae album together called 44/876 and it’s out on 4/20, hehe. This is a lot to process so, please, light one up and take a moment. We understand and are with you. According to Rolling Stone, their two seemingly separate worlds collided thanks to Sting’s manager Martin Kierszenbaum, who was also Shaggy’s A&R guy back when Shaggy was trying to convince us it wasn’t him. Kierszenbaum just so happened to be in the studio with Shaggy one day, working on a song called “Don’t Make Me Wait,†and he decided to send the unfinished track to Sting, who liked it so much he headed down to the studio and hopped on it. The rest is history. Sting now refers to Shaggy as “the pope of Jamaica,†while Shaggy calls Sting “the god,†which sounds like the makings of a bromance we can collectively get invested in. “Don’t Make Me Wait,†the song that started it all, is their first single and according to Shaggy, it sounds “like something that hundreds of women would get pregnant to.†I’ll report back in nine months.

Oh My God, Sting and Shaggy Made a Reggae Album Together