In 1988, prolific musician Tabu Ley Rochereau exiled to France to escape Mobutu Sese Seko's regime in his native Democratic Republic of the Congo.

"[3] Several weeks after recording, Rochereau returned from Paris to Real World Studios to aid with the mixing of the album, where he adjusted the keyboard parts and solo lead guitar, leaving the rest of the mixing work engineer Dave Bottrill, "before heading for Chippenham railway station thoroughly satisfied with yet another smoothly professional piece of music-making.

[5] A total of eighteen performers feature on the album, and two dancers, Apewayi Matshi and Onya Amisi, are also credited in the booklet, as is Lossikiya Maneno for "musical assistance.

[5] According to Phillip Sweeney in the album's liner notes, the tracks that Rochereau chose to record for Babeti Soukous comprise "a broad retrospective of Zairean pop of the previous 20 years,"[3] and as such it has been described as a "live-in-the-studio best-of.

"[7] The music combines contemporary "guitar-and-snare rum numbers," featuring fast, skipping rhythms and the dance-step calls of kwassa-kwassa, madiaba and tshuka,[check spelling] with the older style of rhumba-based soukous, which contains Latin-flavoured horn choruses and jazz-style saxophone solos that had lost popularity among many younger groups.

[9] Alec Foege of Spin found parallels to American funk music via the album's syncopated horn section, drum breaks and electric guitars.

[11] Robert Christgau felt the album's "constituent parts" were its various guitar styles, dance beats, female vocal cameos and what he referred to as "the Smokey-styled ballad.

[3] In the book Historical Dictionary of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, writer Emizet Francois Kisangani wrote that Babeti Soukous was one of several albums by Rochereau that found him success, alongside Exil Ley (1993), Muzina (1994) and Africa Worldwide (1996).

"[11] Folk Roots said: "This is delicious dance music of the most seductive kind - lots of rhumbas featuring Latin-inflected horn choruses and sexy sax solos.

"[14] Meanwhile, in the 1998 book The World Music CD Listeren's Guide, writer Howard J. Blumenthal called the album "a real crowd-pleaser.

Christgau described the album as the "Zairean equivalent of Sunny Adé's Juju Music–an unguided tour through a long, deep pop tradition.