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Bill credited Sly with enhancing both his career and his technique. "He gave me his concept of how to interpret his uncanny sense of rhythm," said the drummer. "He always called me `Lord: He said, `Lord, play sloppy tight and raggedy clean.' Then Sly sat down behind my drums and showed me what he meant.... It was kind of a disjointed, loose, but tight placement of the beats on the drums. It was how he placed the kick drum and snare that was unlike the way a 'normal' drummer would play it, but made so much sense, and he was very musical. Then when he got up from the drums, he'd tell me to take what he'd showed me and put my `polish' on it.... Sly was most intrigued with a drum beat I came up with that we later titled `Stick `n' Lick: We worked on it at the Record Plant in Sausalito. We just laid down a backing track of it, without any words. The groove was an inspiration from listening to Jabo Starks, who was the original drummer for James Brown." Bill testified about his later tours with Sly, through 1973 and '74: "Sometimes we were playing live, I thought we were the greatest band in the world.... Sly helped me to develop my own sense of what was unique."

Engineer Tom Flye further confirms that Sly remained a musical innovator, eager to avoid some of the conceits of production. "He liked a real tight sound.... He liked to hear instruments come and go [in recording], he didn't want them to hang around.... He didn't like a lot of reverb. A lot of records (for your everyday listener who doesn't realize how they're made) sound like they're recorded in a huge room, Carnegie Hall or something like that. Vocals hang on like it's in a cavern.... [But Sly] didn't want that kind of stuff."

A small helping of Sly Jr. 's fretful baby sounds and Kathy's cooing made it into Small Talk's mix, on the album's opening title tune, a couple of years ahead of Stevie Wonder's similar, far more celebrated paternal nod on "Isn't She Lovely." In a contrasting mood, the harmony vocals, keening horns, and Rustee's propulsive bass on "Loose Booty" sparked with erotic potency. The song's lyric chant was later adapted by white rappers the Beastie Boys for their "Shadrach." Also influential, as a soul music cliche, was the pouring of Sid Page's syrupy strings over Freddie's undulating guitar on several tracks, including "Say You Will," "Mother Beautiful," "Time for Livin'," and "Holdin' On." (Similar sounds are found on B. B. King's "The Thrill Is Gone" and the Temptations"' Papa Was a Rollin' Stone.") The slow ballad "Wishful Thinkin"' evinced Sly's early introduction to jazz by David Froehlich, with authentically smoky guitar that echoed the style of Barney Kessel or Herb Ellis. "Livin' While I'm Livin"' was a session of hard-driving chase music, "This Is Love" felt like an homage to the'50s doo-wop with which Sly had begun his career with the Viscaynes back in Vallejo. And the final track, "Can't Strain My Brain," resonated with a bluesy appeal evocative of "If You Want Me to Stay." Sly's own compositional and arranging uniqueness were perhaps less in evidence on Small Talk than on his prior Epic sides, and the participation of Family Stone veterans didn't result in an identifiable revival of the band's sound. But the album still stands higher than many other artists' best efforts. "Time for Livin"' managed to get a hold, weaker than Sly and the band's previous efforts, at number 32 on the hit parade.

After Small Talk, Sly began to drift away from engineer Tom Flye, but he continued his connection with the Record Plant. "Basically, he was living on budget. When he'd need some money, he'd finish a record and turn it in," Tom observes. "One of the owners of the Record Plant talked him into building a studio in the back area of the building, which we called `the Pit.' Traditionally, there's a studio, and the control room is a bit higher, so [the engineers, producers, and other technicians] see down into the studio.... But I remember [Sly] saying, `Why can't we sink the control