After signing to ByStorm in 2007, Miguel recorded the album with producers Dre & Vidal, Fisticuffs, Happy Perez, State of Emergency, and Salaam Remi.

All I Want Is You received positive reviews; critics found some of the music inconsistent but praised Miguel's singing and songwriting abilities while drawing comparisons to Prince.

As a burgeoning songwriter, Miguel had written the R&B song "Sure Thing", which was pitched to music executive Mark Pitts as a candidate for the singer Usher's tentative album.

[3] According to Jason Newman from MTV Buzzworthy, All I Want Is You is "a diverse album rooted in R&B and hip-hop, thoughtfully laced with elements of classic rock, funk and electro".

[4] Marc Hogan from Spin said it featured neo soul music,[5] while AllMusic critic David Jeffries described it as a "slick" and "sexy" synthesis of influences from Prince, Kanye West, and electro.

[10] Though its poor initial showing on the charts seemed to affirm [Jive]'s lack of faith in it, the record gradually discovered an audience over the next year thanks to a trickle of ingratiating singles that established Miguel as one of radio’s rarest commodities: a new R&B star.

[2] During this period, Miguel continued working with various underground acts and writing songs for mainstream recording artists, including Johnson&Jonson, Asher Roth, Jaheim, and Usher.

[7] B. Wright from Vibe found the music inconsistent and "schizophrenic" but praised Miguel's singing and songwriting abilities while determining the record was "worth the purchase price".

[22] Slant Magazine's Matthew Cole said the second half of songs was "less stimulating" on an album that "blends slick, radio-friendly R&B with Prince-aping theatrics, both refracted around a sense of humor that, surreal and sexually unsubtle, would have to make [Prince] proud".

Cole also compared Miguel to singer Kelis, "whose work has an undeniably commercial cunning to it, but who never fails to imbue her pop confections with real personality".

He credited Miguel for "laying out the truth that, as Norman Mailer put it in one of the few useful sex tips in his orgasm-mad canon, 'the man as lover is dependent upon the bounty of the woman.'