The video features a montage of West traversing the streets of the city and showcases its landmarks, alongside cameos from his friends and rap acts there.

[9][10] The track relied on a looped sample of harmonious vocals from Patti LaBelle and the BlueBelles's 1963 cover of the show tune "You'll Never Walk Alone", accompanied by West's boom bap production.

[11][26] Martin's pounding piano was looped to begin off-beat for a raw, hip-hop sound, which displays a gospel influence recurrent in West's productions.

Engineer Mirek Stiles spent this time working with different vocals takes and loops alongside the production team of West, who was then joined by Martin in the control room.

[1] West retracted the original vocal sample of "You'll Never Walk Alone" for "Homecoming" and replaced it with a looped piano riff, which he decorated over a stadium-friendly beat.

[20][21] West uses introspection in a narrative that follows his bittersweet relationship with Chicago as his hometown across the song's two verses, personifying the city as a childhood sweetheart named Wendy.

Giving the song four out of five stars in Digital Spy, Nick Levine described it as the "emotional centrepiece" of Graduation, commenting that West shows his humanity and Martin provides "a pomp-filled piano riff" with undertones of English singer and composer Elton John.

[44] Levine noted how the song could have ended up becoming "a crass exercise in mutual back-slapping", thanking Martin for managing to bring out West's softness that marked "the bragging rapper's most affecting moment to date".

[69] Paste reviewer Ross Bonaime wrote that West's usage of Martin is the most successful and they are a "undeniably pretty great" duo, although found it weird hearing the singer sing of Chicago as home.

Dorian Lynskey of The Guardian paid attention to its flaws, advising against guesting Martin on a song about Chicago due to his Devon nativity and thought even his emotion cannot make being "moved by the memory" of Lake Michigan fireworks convincing.

's Del Cowie remarked that "Homecoming" lacks the level of emotion that a "hometown ode should elicit", attributing this to Martin's "yodelling soccer yob".

[71] Labeling the track as one of the album's transgressions, Noah Love of Chart Attack stated that it would be better without the singer's crooning and considered West was still finding his lyrical potential.

[72] Chicago Tribune music critic Greg Kot dismissed Martin's vocals and the "cornball piano riff", feeling that the song fails and results in the album's biggest misstep.

[75] At Stylus Magazine, Jayson Greene expressed that the usage of "Home" for the song is the album's prime example of West's "narrow lyrical focus" of reiterating his older works and strongly demonstrates he has not left his defining moment, despite "a big, stadium-ready beat".

[16] On a similar note, The Boston Globe's Julian Benbow criticized West for the awkwardness of combining "a song from a four-year-old mix-tape" with heavy drums and piano.

[9] Also in this year, Jeva Lange of The Week identified the song as West's best track and was impressed by his personification of Chicago that showed a deep love, praising its evolution for the original too.

[77] In 2017, CraveOnline ranked "Homecoming" as West's best song; the staff summarized that the instrumentation is the highlight and combined with the topic of his love for Chicago, makes for a "high point".

[21] Highsnobiety cited "Homecoming" as the 40th best West song six years later, with Donovan Barnett referring to it as a "classic Kanye cut" for the piano instrumentation, ode to the city, and Martin's chorus.

[81] VH1 ranked the music video as the fifth greatest clip filmed in an artist's hometown a year later, with Lucelenia Amparo hailing the shots of Chicago and "the perfect touch" from Martin.

[124] West walked across the stage rocking a white jacket and large eyewear while performing "Homecoming" on the final night of Lollapalooza 2008 in August, co-headlining the festival in Chicago.

[126][127] The song was performed by West during his 90-minute headlining set for the annual dance music festival Global Gathering at Long Marston Airfield near Stratford-upon-Avon, Warwickshire, on July 25, 2008.

[136][137][138] On August 12, 2010, West and Legend performed the song to open their secret black-tie show at The Box nightclub on Chrystie Street in Manhattan, NYC, held for around 200 select attendees over 90 minutes.

West dubbed the function "Rosewood" and used a stage set-up including a Roland TR-808 drum machine, a keyboard, and two microphones, with one utilized solely for Auto-Tune.

[139][140] On December 31, 2010, West made a surprise appearance during Jay-Z and Coldplay's co-headlining set at the Marquee Nightclub for the grand opening of the luxury resort casino and hotel Cosmpolitan on the Las Vegas Strip of Paradise, Nevada, performing the song with Martin for the first time.

The project was commissioned by West and his team in the lead-up to his fourth studio album 808s & Heartbreak, with each remix experiencing at least five reiterations before release; they are mostly club-friendly dance-themed numbers.

[145][146] On June 7, 2012, producer Carlos Serrano shared his mashup of "Homecoming" and singer-songwriter Lana Del Rey's "Born to Die" (2011), layering West and Martin's vocals over the instrumentation of the latter song.

[148][149][150] On October 3, 2016, Jeff Kirshman published his ode to "Homecoming" in Brooklyn Magazine, writing that it reminds him of living in Wyoming due to invoking his memories of images and knowledge.

[151][152] Kirshman particularly enjoyed the song when listening to Graduation in high school and first performed it at a dilapidated Hollywood-themed Karen & Jim's venue, affirming his view of his rap skills as basic from the crowd's negative reactions.

He was compelled to perform the song again and did this at a bar while drinking warm beer by a row of dim lights, onlooked by a mounted head of the Star Wars character Admiral Ackbar.

[151] On April 29, 2022, British rapper Dave played a section of the song on piano for his We're All Alone in This Together tour's show at the Riviera Theatre in Chicago, serving as a tribute to West.