In March of 2012, my sister came to me and said she needed background music for an anti-bullying video she was doing in her 7th grade tech class. She said they were allowed to either use 30 seconds of an existing song, or create their own. (There was a 3rd option of no background music whatsoever, but that's quite boring...) She wanted me to put together 4 30-second clips of 4 different songs to use in her video, but since I didn't feel like doing that, I told her I would just write a little beat for the video. I finished a rough draft of it that night, and it sounded pretty close to the current instrumental. I listened to it a couple times, and thought to myself "hey... I think I'll try to go somewhere with this..." About a week later, I Facebook messaged my friend Mike Hunter about rapping on this new track. I sent it to him, and he said he'd do it! So, I explained to him that it was going to be an anti-bullying song, and if he could come up with some words for him to rap to, that would be awesome.
Roughly 3 weeks later, we both finished our lyrics, and set up a weekend for him to come over and record his rapping. My boss at KDWA allowed me to use the studio to record this song, which REALLY helped a lot! :) The official recording date was Saturday, May 5th. (Cinco de Mayo!) Mike even freestyled a little bit when we weren't recording, and after hearing it, I honestly think he will make it big!
A week after we recorded it, I finished with the last touches and we talked about a release date as a single. Soon, we agreed on June 12th. That's the day it went up on iTunes. The official artwork for the single was sketched by my good friend Austin Winter. One week later, I uploaded an audio video to YouTube.
~EP Version~
With a release date of December 11th, "Taking A Stand" is extended a little bit, and the chorus was switched up just a tad. I remastered it too, and I think it sounds a LOT better than the single version!
It is the 5th and final track on the "Mixed Emotions" EP.
Listen on YouTube
iTunes
