The visual features a group of men saying the names of people who are dead or imprisoned while Pop Smoke raps the song and holds a small child in his arms.

The rapper promoted the song by performing it for VevoDSCVR and MTV's Total Request Live offshoot program Fresh Ouwt Friday.

[9][10] The song has been labelled "chaotic",[11] and features "sinister and violent" lyrics, with Pop Smoke's voice singled out for being "preposterously"[11] and "hauntingly" deep.

[12] Complex magazine's Jessica McKinney called the song "distinctly Brooklyn", due to Pop Smoke's thick accent and the drill beat from producer 808Melo,[11] which Pitchfork noted as being "haphazard and bass-heavy".

[12] The staff of Vulture wrote: "[The] U.K.-grime-infused tune coupled with Pop's baritone and unconventional delivery captivated everyone from the streets of Brooklyn to the rest of the world".

[18] Writing for Billboard magazine, Michael Saponara mentioned "Welcome to the Party" was the "record to put the hip-hop world on notice that Pop Smoke had plans of being much more than a local Brooklyn phenom".

[20] Chris Richards of The Washington Post depicted the song had "already been oozing out of cracked car windows in [Pop Smoke's] native Brooklyn for an entire summer".

[21] Paul Thompson of GQ opined it was a "hypnotic study in tone", and that "it did feel like party music, capable of cutting through the humidity and making swaths of people dance, or at least move their shoulders a little bit while they grimaced into their phones' cameras".

[22] Thomas Hobb of The Independent lauded the track as exhilarating, and opined it "bottled the energy of free-falling between two skyscrapers, cape flapping behind, as the street-smart MC convincingly framed himself as a black superhero".

[25] After gaining popularity, the song was remixed by ASAP Ferg, Pusha T, Rico Nasty, Skepta, Headie One, Dave East and Kiing Shooter, and Meek Mill.

[41] The video opens up with a group of young men saying the names of people who dead or imprisoned, while a red-lettered warning about prop guns flashes on the screen.

[44] In February of the next year, shortly after his death, the Yard Club in Paris, France, debuted an on-stage hologram of Pop Smoke that virtually performed "Welcome to the Party".