Denene Millner : MyBlogHer Profile

So I’m in the car on my way to Target with my daughters when I realize I pulled out without my pack of homemade kid-friendly/mom-approved CD mixes. Now, this isn’t an issue if I’m driving alone—I simply tune into talk radio (Warren Ballentine has myear during morning errands, Michel Martin’s NPR show Tell Me More is on in the afternoon, and I smile all the way to my exercise torture… er, African dance class listening to Farai Chideya’s News & Notes in the evenings). But Mari and Lila neither understand nor appreciate the finer points of intelligent black thought on the RNC convention and the Kwame Kilpatrick fiasco (hey,they’re nine and six—have an exhaustive talk about SpongeBob, Raven-Symone, orsnot, and they’re all in). So I turned on the radio. It was nine in the morning. I live only about five minutes from Target. “How bad could it be?” I asked myself as I punched in my local R&B station. And wouldn’t you know—on comes Lil’ Wayne’s “Mrs. Officer,” with Bobby Valentino contributing achorus of police siren noises and dirty talk about what he’s going to do to thelady cop when he gets her in the backseat of her ride. It took Lila, the 6-year-old, all of three seconds to tap into her inner Beyonce and join along:“When I get all up in ya/We can hear the angels calling us/We can see thesunrise before us/And when I’m in that thang/I’ll make that body sing/I make itsay Wee Ooh Wee Ooh Wee…” she sang with much gusto and way too much glee.  Read more >