In March 1989, Selena signed with EMI Latin, which had opened a Latin music division with José Behar as president. Though EMI marketed her as a solo artist, her Los Dinos band continued to tour with her. Initially, Behar and Stephen Finfer asked Selena for a crossover album. After recording three demos for the heads of EMI Records' pop division, Charles Koppelman rejected them and suggested Selena perform songs that appealed to her fan base. Before her debut album with the company, her brother A.B. Quintanilla had fought to remain the singer's principal producer and songwriter. Feeling they were "gambling" in the Latin music market, EMI Latin entered into an agreement with A.B. that if he failed to produce a successful record he would be replaced by a Grammy Award-winning producer and songwriter. Selena's debut album outperformed other recordings by contemporaneous female Tejano singers and enjoyed moderate success. A.B. was allowed to continue as the singer's producer and songwriter for "Ven Conmigo". "Ven Conmigo" was recorded at record producer Joey Lopez' Zaz Studios in San Antonio. The band entered the studio "with more musical firepower than ever before". A.B. arranged the album and chose what would be included on it, "carefully select[ing] the songs [that would] jumpstart [Selena's] transition into a larger Latino market". Keyboardist Ricky Vela programmed the entire project, while band members contributed to the recording by composing seven of the album's ten songs. "Ven Conmigo" contains half cumbias and half rancheras. It includes musical influences from: salsa, rock and roll, rap and soul music, traditional Mexican music, Mexican folk, polka, country, and Colombian music. Abraham Quintanilla, Jr.—the group's manager and Selena's father—suggested the idea of having a variety of genres on the album: "I always felt that the buyer, the listener, would enjoy this and would not get bored hearing just one particular style of music." The compositions for the album were musically varied— more "broader-based and more adventurous than any mainstream Tejano act" according to biographer Joe Nick Patoski. Selena and her band were "evolving a rhythmic style that demonstrated its prowess for catchy cumbias". "Ven Conmigo" scrapped the conventional styles and track organization of the typical Tejano album of "a two-sided single sandwiched between a bunch of polkas and oldie-but-goodie [songs]".