Amor Prohibido

Amor Prohibido

began after the launch of her Selena Etc. boutiques and her southern US clothing venture, and the release of her 1993 album Live!. She wanted the set to draw in audiences who were not acquainted with her music and had little or no knowledge of Tejano music, and she desired to release an album more musically diverse than her previous works. The singer wrote material throughout 1993 and 1994, together with Selena y Los Dinos members Ricky Vela and Pete Astudillo, but Selena's brother and principal record producer, A.B. Quintanilla III, was the main songwriter of Amor Prohibido.

Amor Prohibido is composed mainly of Mexican cumbia and dance-pop songs sung in Spanish, and helped to expand the Tejano music movement in the US. The album's central themes center on family history, unrequited and adrenaline-fueled love, and unfaithful romantic partners, and its lyrical content suggests female empowerment. Several of its songs reached number one on the Billboard Hot Latin Songs chart over the next two years. Its title track stayed at number one for nine consecutive weeks, was nominated for a Grammy Award, sold over 400,000 copies in the US, and according to Billboard magazine was the most successful Latin single of 1994.

The album itself debuted at number one on Billboard's Latin Regional Mexican Albums and Top Latin Albums chart in April 1994, a month after its release. It also peaked at number 29 on the Billboard 200 chart a year afterward, with sales of 54,753 copies in one week. Reviews of Amor Prohibido were generally positive. Ramiro Burr of Billboard called it Selena's "crowning achievement". Amor Prohibido sold over 500,000 copies in its first year. It became the best-selling Latin album of all time, and has since been surpassed only by her posthumous album, Dreaming of You (1995). It was certified 20× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in February 2010, denoting shipments of 2,000,000 copies.

A worldwide tour to promote the album began in January, 1994. This tour included a performance at the Houston Astrodome on February 26, 1995, which broke American audience records, and is notable as her final televised concert. Amor Prohibido was nominated in the category of "Best Mexican American Album" at the 37th Grammy Awards. It won all awards for which it was nominated at the 1995 Tejano Music Awards, 1995 Lo Nuestro Awards and the 1995 Billboard Latin Music Awards. Amor Prohibido was re-released on September 24, 2002, as part of the Selena: 20 Years of Music collection, which included music videos and spoken liner notes by her family, friends and former band members.