The Little Steven-led project features contributions from more than 50 artists from the rock, hip hop, soul, funk, jazz, reggae, latin, and world music genres.

[7][8] Van Zandt's mission was to raise awareness of the racial segregation enforced by the white government in South Africa, and to encourage the cultural boycott[7] the United Nations had imposed in the early 1980s.

[9][10] "I had been doing research on American foreign policies," Van Zandt said, "and South Africa was on my list of engagements we were involved with, which I felt our government was on the wrong side of.

"[11] With assistance from ABC News journalist Danny Schechter, Van Zandt and Baker assembled a wide variety of artists from Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan and Lou Reed to Gil Scott-Heron, Miles Davis and Africa Bambaataa.

Drummer-musician Keith LeBlanc and Danny Schechter came up with "Revolutionary Situation", an audio-collage set to music that took its title from the words of South Africa's then-interior minister Louis Nel condemning the state of the country.

Amid a background of yapping police dogs, sounds of mayhem and revolt in the township, LeBlanc and Schechter mixed in angry declarations by activists like Alan Boesak, Bishop Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela's daughter Zindzi, looped with what was at that time the most recent interview with her father, recorded in 1961.

The song was quickly recorded, with guitarists Keith Richards and Ron Wood of the Rolling Stones, and drummer Steve Jordan.

Bono later explained, in an appearance on the US syndicated radio show "Rockline" with Bob Coburn, that he submitted the tape of the song after the album's artwork had been printed by EMI Manhattan Records.

Then audio from news footage, excerpts from Nelson Mandela's speeches, and sound effects were added, and turned into an anti-apartheid montage.

[15] Music critic Robert Christgau felt that each side of the album closes with "a well-meaning failure", writing that "Revolutionary Situation"'s "collage of indistinct South African voices over Keith LeBlanc humdrum is an object lesson in political correctness that might have made a collectible B, and Bono's country blues is simply ignorant."

In 2019, the album was remastered for release as part of Van Zandt's career-spanning box set Rock N Roll Rebel: The Early Work.