These are the massively popular hits of the Rolling Stones, a band that can only be mentioned along with the Beatles in terms of popularity in English-speaking rock music. Between the two, the Stones sought the harder, meaner and more sexist image compared with the Beatles.
"Under My Thumb" is catchy, but it's about emotional domination of wimmin by their boyfriends or husbands. The hugely popular hard rock song "Brown Sugar" is about an English man whipping Black wimmin and having sex with/raping them in a slave context. It's amazing the song made it so far.
There are a few songs on this album with revolutionary context. The most obvious is "Street Fighting Man," which glorifies an image opposite of the peaceful hippie image the Beatles were pushing at about the same time. Of course, in May, 1968, there was literally street-fighting in Paris, France and the Rolling Stones participated in a movie originally titled after that street-fighting, directed by Jean-Luc Godard.
That movie was about revolution in general and it used another "Hot Rocks" song, "Sympathy for the Devil" and its creation as the theme of the movie. "Sympathy for the Devil" is talking about wars and assassinations.
Another song with a positive spin to it is "Gimme Shelter" which is about war, rape and murder. It's hard to make out the first word of what Jagger is saying: "War, children, it's just a shot away It's just a shot away." While Jagger constantly puts down adult wimmin, his attitude toward children is more correct, at least with regard to war and drug-dealing.
Perhaps less well-known is that Mick Jagger mixed in a mention of a "Black Panther" in "Midnight Rambler," a deeply menacing song of violence. It's talking about serial rapists and perhaps evoking Eldridge Cleaver as the "proud Black Panther." Cleaver had written a book on why as a younger man he was proud to rape white wimmin as revenge for racism.
Like many artists, Jagger's actions in life don't always match his art. In addition to helping out Godard, Jagger raised money for Maoist prisoners. While John Lennon was saying "all I can tell you is brother you have to wait" in his song "Revolution," Jagger was out there doing at least a little for the revolution.
Later in his music he continues to mix together sexism and racism when speaking of adult wimmin. At the same time, he has also done songs about the humyn-rights work of his one-time beau Bianca in Latin America.
Some of the songs on this album are near the top of the list "To Be Censored Under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat." Other songs reflect the anti-war movement and generally radical politics of the times. On the whole, as even Jagger himself admits, the Rolling Stones put forward horrific sexism. Undoing the damage and putting out equally popular music without the sexism is a challenge to the revolution.