According to Hendrix biographer Harry Shapiro, the music on "Are You Experienced" incorporates a variety of music genres from rhythm and blues to free jazz; author Peter Doggett noted its "wide variety of styles", while journalist Chris Welch said "each track has a different personality". Musicologist Gilbert Chase asserted that the album "marked a high peak in hard rock", and music critic Jim DeRogatis characterized the LP and its preceding singles as "raw, focused psychedelic rock". A contemporary review published in "Newsweek" in October 1967 identified the influence of soul music on the Experience and the album. In 1989, "Hit Parader" magazine ranked it number 35 in a list of the top 100 heavy metal albums. In 2006, writer and archivist Reuben Jackson of the Smithsonian Institution wrote: "it's still a landmark recording because it is of the rock, R&B, blues ... musical tradition. It altered the syntax of the music ... in a way I compare to, say, James Joyce's "Ulysses"."