It was recorded on April 25, 1979, at CBS Studios in New York City with his band Prime Time, which featured guitarists Charlie Ellerbee and Bern Nix, bassist Jamaaladeen Tacuma, and drummers Calvin Weston and Coleman's son Denardo.

He also drew on rhythm and blues influences from early in his career for Of Human Feelings, which had shorter and more distinct compositions than Dancing in Your Head, while applying free jazz principles from his music during the 1960s to elements of funk.

[3] Coleman likened this group ethic to a spirit of "collective consciousness" that stresses "human feelings" and "biological rhythms", and said that he wanted the music, rather than himself, to be successful.

[4] He also started to incorporate elements from other styles into his music, including rock influences such as the electric guitar and non-Western rhythms played by Moroccan and Nigerian musicians.

[5] Of Human Feelings is a continuation of the harmolodics approach Coleman had applied with Prime Time, an electric quartet introduced on his 1975 album Dancing in Your Head.

[17] Glenn Kenny disagreed and felt its boisterous style had more in common with the no wave genre and the artists of New York City's downtown music scene such as John Zorn.

was titled as a sly reference to two of his older compositions, "Love Eyes" and "Forgotten Songs" (also known as "Holiday for Heroes"), whose themes were played concurrently and transfigured by Prime Time.

Nicholson observed West African rhythms and collective improvisation rooted in New Orleans jazz on "Love Words", and suggested that "Sleep Talk" was derived from the opening bassoon solo in Igor Stravinsky's 1913 orchestral work The Rite of Spring.

Trio, who had previously released a compilation of Coleman's 1966 to 1971 live performances in Paris, prepared to press the album once Mwanga provided the label with the record stamper.

[31] The album's clean mix and relatively short tracks were interpreted as an attempt for radio airplay by Mandel, who described its production as "the surface consistency that would put it in the pop sphere".

[33] Sound & Vision critic Brent Butterworth speculated that it was overlooked because it had electric instruments, rock and funk drumming, and did not conform to what he felt was the hokey image of jazz that many of the genre's fans preferred.

[41] Reviewing the album for Esquire in 1982, Gary Giddins hailed it as another landmark recording from Coleman and his most accomplished work of harmolodics, partly because of compositions which he found clearly expressed and occasionally timeless.

In his opinion, the discordant keys radically transmute conventional polyphony and may be the most challenging part for listeners, who he said should concentrate on Coleman's playing and "let the maelstrom resolve itself around his center".

[24] Kofi Natambu from the Detroit Metro Times wrote that Coleman's synergetic approach displays expressive immediacy rather than superficial technical flair while calling the record "a multi-tonal mosaic of great power, humor, color, wit, sensuality, compassion and tenderness".

He found its exchange of rhythms and simple melodies heartfelt and sophisticated, writing in The Village Voice that "the way the players break into ripples of song only to ebb back into the tideway is participatory democracy at its most practical and utopian.

[43] Dan Sullivan of the Los Angeles Times believed the album's supporters in "hip rock circles" had overlooked flaws, arguing that Tacuma and Coleman's playing sound like a unique "beacon of clarity" amid an incessant background.

[44] Leonard Feather wrote in the Toledo Blade that the music is stylistically ambiguous, potentially controversial, and difficult to assess but interesting enough to warrant a listen.

[45] At the end of 1982, Of Human Feelings the year's best album by Billboard editor Peter Keepnews, who viewed it as a prime example of fusing free jazz with modern funk.

[51] Subsequently, Coleman chose his son Denardo to manage his career while overcoming his reticence of public performance, which had been rooted in his distrust of doing business with a predominantly White music industry.

[3] Because writers and musicians had heard its test pressing in 1979, the album's mix of jazz improvisation and gritty, punk and funk-derived energy sounded "prophetic" when it was released, Palmer explains.

"[5] Although Coleman's compositions never achieved popularity, AllMusic critic Scott Yanow says they succeeded within the context of an album that showcased his distinctive saxophone style, which was high-brow yet catchy.