{^Head Hunters} was a pivotal point in {$Herbie Hancock}'s career, bringing him into the vanguard of {\jazz} {\fusion}. {$Hancock} had pushed {\avant-garde} boundaries on his own albums and with {$Miles Davis}, but he had never devoted himself to the groove as he did on {^Head Hunters}. Drawing heavily from {$Sly Stone}, {$Curtis Mayfield}, and {$James Brown}, {$Hancock} developed deeply funky, even gritty, rhythms over which he soloed on electric synthesizers, bringing the instrument to the forefront in {\jazz}. It had all of the sensibilities of {\jazz}, particularly in the way it wound off into long improvisations, but its rhythms were firmly planted in {\funk}, {\soul}, and {\R&B}, giving it a mass appeal that made it the biggest-selling {\jazz} album of all time (a record which was later broken). {\Jazz} purists, of course, decried the experiments at the time, but {^Head Hunters} still sounds fresh and vital decades after its initial release, and its genre-bending proved vastly influential on not only {\jazz}, but {\funk}, {\soul}, and {\hip-hop}. ~ Stephen Thomas Erlewine, All Music Guide