The four tracks featuring the Time were originally going to be on Corporate World, recorded in 1989, though "The Latest Fashion" reuses music from "My Summertime Thang" from their album Pandemonium.

Graffiti Bridge received positive reviews from contemporary critics, who praised Prince's songwriting and the variety of the music while deeming it an improvement over 1988's Lovesexy.

[10] Rolling Stone reviewer Paul Evans credited him for lending a "sharper focus", "harder groove", and emphasis on funk and rock rather than "the feckless genre dabbling" of albums such as Lovesexy and Around the World in a Day (1985).

[1] Greg Kot, the Chicago Tribune's chief music critic, called the album "a sprawling, wildly diffuse statement on love, sin, sex and salvation that ranks with his best work", as well as "perhaps his most complex and, dare we say, mature exploration" of those themes.

[7] In The New York Times, Jon Pareles believed Graffiti Bridge would perhaps give Prince a success on both commercial and artistic terms, although he lamented some of the lyrics: "Verbally, he's no deep thinker; when he's not singing about sex, his messages tend to be benevolent and banal.

He applauded the guest artists, particularly the Time, and some of Prince's own half of songs, but said most of them were "overly subtle if not rehashed or just weak: title track, generational anthem, and lead single all reprise familiar themes, and the ballads fall short of the exquisite vocalese that can make his slow ones sing.

"[12] At the end of 1990, Graffiti Bridge was voted the tenth best album of the year in the Pazz & Jop, a nationwide poll of American critics, published by The Village Voice.

[5] Michaelangelo Matos was more critical in The Rolling Stone Album Guide (2004), finding the record "interesting primarily for its guest stars" and "for the fact that it now sounds as dated as the new jack swing it apes".