[1] Recording sessions for the album featured a changing lineup of musicians including bassist Michael Henderson, guitarist John McLaughlin, and keyboardists Chick Corea and Herbie Hancock, with Davis playing his trumpet through a wah-wah pedal.

In early 1972, Davis began conceiving On the Corner as an attempt to reconnect with a young African-American audience which had largely forsaken jazz for the funk of artists such as Sly and the Family Stone and James Brown.

Both sides of the record consisted of repetitive drum and bass grooves based around a one-chord modal approach,[7][16] with the final cut edited down from hours of jams featuring changing lineups underpinned by bassist Michael Henderson.

[8] Other musicians involved in the recording included guitarist John McLaughlin, drummers Jack DeJohnette and Billy Hart, and keyboardists Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea.

[12] Jazz historian Robert Gluck later discussed the performances: "The recording functions on two layers: a relatively static, dense thicket of rhythmic pulse provided by McLaughlin's percussive guitar attack, the multiple percussionists, and Henderson's funky bass lines, plus keyboard swirls on which the horn players solo.

"[8] Jazz Journal critic Jon Brown wrote that "it sounds merely as if the band had selected a chord and decided to worry hell out of it for three-quarters of an hour,"[8] concluding that "I'd like to think that nobody could be so easily pleased as to dig this record to any extent.

"[8] Rock journalist Robert Christgau later suggested that jazz critics were not receptive to On the Corner "because the improvisations are rhythmic rather than melodic" and Davis played the organ more than his trumpet.

[23] In a positive review for Rolling Stone, Ralph J. Gleason found the music very "lyrical and rhythmic" while praising the dynamic stereo recording and calling Davis "a magician".

Tingen wrote that "predictably, this impenetrable and almost tuneless concoction of avant-garde classical, free jazz, African, Indian and acid funk bombed spectacularly, leading to decades in the wilderness.

[16] 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 its mix of "funk guitars, Indian percussion, dub production techniques, [and] loops that predict hip hop.

"[19] According to Alternative Press, On the Corner is an "essential masterpiece" that envisioned much of modern popular music, "representing the high water mark of [Davis'] experiments in the fusion of rock, funk, electronica and jazz".

[25] 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.

Reviewing the box set in The Wire, critic Mark Fisher wrote that "[t]he passing of time often neutralises and naturalises sounds that were once experimental, but retrospection has not made On the Corner's febrile, bilious stew any easier to digest.

"[15] Stylus Magazine's Chris Smith wrote that the record anticipated musical principles that abandoned a focus on a single soloist in favor of collective playing: "At times harshly minimal, at others expansive and dense, it upset quite a few people.

[39] According to the magazine's David Stubbs, On the Corner was "Miles's most extreme foray into what was often pejoratively dismissed as jazz rock and is still regarded by many critics today as a grotesque, period aberration".

[40] John F. Szwed also wrote of the album in The Wire: Jazz musicians hated it, critics bemoaned Miles's fall from grace, and since Columbia failed to market it as a pop record, it died in the racks.

Dense with rhythm and conceptually enriched with noises, his trumpet's role mixed down to that of a journeyman, the melody reduced to recycled Minimalist patterns, Davis broke every rule enforced by the jazz police.

[42] According to NPR Music's Felix Contreras, On the Corner was among several albums from 1972 that "blurred the lines between rock and jazz", along with I Sing the Body Electric by Weather Report and Santana's Caravanserai.