J. D. Coniside of The Rolling Stone wrote: "With a voice as rich and caramel-y as Sarah Vaughan's, and a delivery as intimately conversational as Joni Mitchell's, Cassandra Wilson is the perfect jazz singer for people who don't particularly like jazz singing...

[8] David R. Adler of AllMusic stated: "Cassandra Wilson continues to move down a highly eclectic path on Belly of the Sun, the somewhat belated follow-up to Traveling Miles.

While displaying a jazz singer's mastery of melodic nuance and improvisatory phrasing, Wilson draws on a variety of non-jazz idioms -- roots music, rock, Delta blues, country, soul -- to create a kind of earthy, intelligent pop with obvious crossover appeal".

[3] Marshall Bowden of PopMatters commented: " If, despite all that, all you can worry about is whether Belly of the Sun is a "real" jazz album or not, it's your problem, not Cassandra's.

The promotional version was a regular pressed and silk-screened disc (not a CD-R) and came in a cardboard sleeve and had no album artwork.