On the Corner was panned by most critics and contemporaries in jazz; according to
Paul Tingen, it became "the most vilified and controversial album in the history of jazz" only a few weeks after its release.
[5]Rolling Stone magazine's
Ralph J. Gleason wrote positively of the album. He found the music to be "so lyrical and rhythmic", with "loving sounds" produced by Davis' horn and Garnett's saxophone, and said "the impact of the whole is greater than the sum of any part."
[22] Its use of rhythm as the basis of the music's improvisations rather than melody,
Robert Christgau wrote, were the reason most jazz critics were not as receptive to the album as rock critics. Christgau himself said "rhythmic improvisations are hardly the equivalent of a big beat and don't guarantee a good one. I'd like to hear 'Black Satin' right now. But the rest I can wait for."
[15]
On the Corner continued to be renounced by the jazz community while many other writers deemed it "a visionary musical statement that was way ahead of its time", Tingen said.
[5] In 2014,
Stereogum hailed it as "one of the greatest records of the 20th Century, and easily one of Miles Davis' most astonishing achievements," noting the album's mix of "funk guitars,
Indian percussion,
dub production techniques, loops that predict
hip-hop."
[6] According to
Alternative Press, the "essential masterpiece" envisioned much of modern popular music, "representing the high water mark of [Davis'] experiments in the fusion of rock, funk, electronica and jazz".
[14]Fact characterized the album as "a frenetic and punky record, radical in its use of studio technology," adding that "the debt that the modern dance floor owes the pounding abstractions of
On the Corner has yet to be fully understood."
[23]Pitchfork Media described the album as " the sound of icy hot heroin coursing through the veins [...] longing, passion and rage milked from the primal source and heading into the dark beyond."
[24]
AllMusic stated that "the music on the album itself influenced [...] every single thing that came after it in jazz, rock, soul, funk, hip-hop, electronic and
dance music,
ambient music, and even popular
world music, directly or indirectly."
[25]BBC Music noted the music and production techniques of
On the Corner "prefigured and in some cases gave birth to
nu-jazz,
jazz funk,
experimental jazz, ambient and even world music."
[26] Critic
Simon Reynolds also noted the album's influence on a variety of
post-punk and
industrial artists.
[27]Stylus Magazine's Chris Smith wrote that the record's music anticipated musical principles that abandoned a focus on a single soloist in favor of an emphasis on collective playing: "At times harshly minimal, at others expansive and dense, it upset quite a few people. You could call it punk."
[28]Fact named
On the Corner the 11th best album of the 1970s,
[23] while
Pitchfork Media named the album the 30th best album of that decade.