Yeah, I wonder if this has anything to do with that album he did with Gus Van Zant in the 80s. The music on that pretty much sucked, too.

No, this is from an album he did with Bill Laswell, called Hallucination Engine. The album includes Shankar, Herbie Hancock, Sly Dunbar, Bootsy Collins, Bernie Worrell and others.
Bill Laswell is extremely prolific and a lot of what he puts out is crap, but this record is actually very good. This track in particular is more of a vessel for the spoken word, so the music doesn't get in the way of it.
Anyway, in my opinion this album has some of the best music Laswell ever produced, aside from the Transmutation album by Praxis.

A way better version of this was on Spare Ass Annie and Other Tales