Songfacts®:

• When I Get Home acts as an ode to Solange's hometown of Houston. The song is titled after the area that is located 11 miles outside of downtown Houston.
• "Amelda" draws from Solange's cultural experiences as an African-American female growing up in Houston. Its composition utilizes chopped and screwed, a technique of remixing hip-hop music originated in Houston by producer DJ Screw in the 1990s. His method was to slow down the basic tracks of a cut ("Screwing"), before applying techniques such as skipping beats and record scratching to produce a "chopped-up" version of the original.
• Lyrically, the song is a daydream in which Solange wearing black braids sips on purple drank
  
  Pour my drank, drank
  Sip, sip, sip, sip, sip
  
  Purple drank is a stripe or fruit juice mixed with prescription-strength cough syrup, which was popularized by DJ Screw.
  
  Solange also references the unisex perfume Florida Water as a metaphor for the strength of black faith.
  
  Black faith still can't be washed away
  Not even in that Florida water
  
  The body scent is often used as a form of holy water in Wiccan and Vodun religious rituals.
• The song features an appearance by rapper Playboi Carti, while The-Dream, who co-wrote the cut, croons the refrain. Solange and Playboi Carti have never worked together before. The-Dream also appears on another When I Get Home track, "Binz," and previously collaborated with Solange on her A Seat at the Table tunes "F.U.B.U." and "Mad."