Released by Epic Records, just before the group's celebrated performance at the Woodstock festival, it became the band's most commercially successful album to date.

[12] In 2015, the album was deemed "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" by the Library of Congress and selected for inclusion in the National Recording Registry.

Although the Family Stone's single "Dance to the Music" was a top ten hit in early 1968, none of the band's first three albums reached above 100 on the Billboard 200.

begins with the title track on which Sly sings lead, a mid-tempo number launching into a gospel break for its final forty-nine seconds.

The song's slightly pessimistic tone would be expanded upon later in the band's career with "Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin)" and the There's a Riot Goin' On LP,[17] and would be a hit for the Family Stone's vocal group Little Sister, the first Top 40 single to use a drum machine.

The track's guitar riff is heard on Ike & Tina Turner's "Bold Soul Sister" (from The Hunter, 1969), Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys (1970) and Miles Davis' A Tribute to Jack Johnson (1971).

Gregg Errico's drum solo closes the song and the band members are heard bursting into laughter during the final seconds.

Reviewing for Rolling Stone in July 1969, Alec Dubro observed a "very evident sense of moral purpose" in the content and a rawness in its brand of soul music, which he said "depends on sheer energy more than anything else".

Overall, he found the album provocative and "effective", recommended "for anyone who can groove on a bunch of very raucous kids charging through a record, telling you exactly what they think whether you want to hear it that way or not.

was "the group’s true breakthrough" as its "seamless blend of rock, funk and soul, and the soaring mix of black and white voices, made crossover seem like Utopia."

Commenting on the music's historical context, Shapiro added: At a time when the civil rights coalition was breaking apart, when flower power was mutating into armed struggle, the Family Stone clung desperately to the belief that 'You Can Make it If You Try' and had the gall to deliver the decade's most powerful message of unity as a singsong nursery rhyme.

Primal Scream sampled "Sex Machine" on their cover of The 13th Floor Elevators' "Slip Inside This House" from their Screamadelica album Rapper Ice-T, Body Count, and Jane's Addiction performed "Don't Call Me Nigger, Whitey" during the 1991 Lollapalooza tour and in the 1993 Perry Farrell film Gift.