Yo Baby!

In my never-ending quest to monetize my identical twin girls, I have a new angle:  Meet Yo Baby!, soon to be a toddler rap sensation. (The exclamation mark is part of her new hip hop name, dig?) I don't think the other twin can cut it kickin' it with Eminem and Ja Rule. Her delicate demeanor is more suited to Christian rock so this will have to be a single gig.  Yo Baby! is the real thing, she's even willing to cut herself to look tougher (note the self-inflicted scratch on her cheek and bruise from purposely running head first into a wall.)  

This idea materialized when I realized mental illness reared its ugly head earlier than expected in Yo Baby!. Oh, I knew it would make an appearance sooner or later, given its deep roots in my family genome. I just hoped it would surface during the teenage years, when I could write it off as normal teenage angst rather than deep-seated emotional issues due to heredity and questionable mothering skills.

I always wondered what form it would take. Manic depression? Agoraphobia? Pyromania? No, ladies and gentleman, we have just a good old-fashioned case of obsessive compulsive disorder. Upon waking each morning, Yo Baby! insists on putting on her Halloween bib and then gesturing frantically for a shirt with a hood so she can saunter around all day with the hood up, bib fit snugly around it.  It's a bad-ass look and I had what Oprah likes to call a "light-bulb moment." I briefly thought it could be the Yo Babies! but her sister is really just a poser, only wanting the pumpkin bib every so often and tiring of the hood-up routine around snack time.  Yo Baby! goes ballistic if I try to take the bib, rummaging around in hysterical confusion much like a compulsive hand washer who can't find any soap.  And if you try to flip her hood down, she yelps like an injured puppy (I recorded the sound as I think it will mix well on her album).

My one concern with the name is that the Yo Baby yogurt people might try to sue us.  I'm thinking Yo Baby! can be the spokesmodel for Yo Baby yogurt -- it's her favorite -- thus avoiding any nasty litigation.  It may be a challenge to balance her sinister rap persona with an adorable yogurt-eating image but I'm good like that.

I'm trying to write her first rap song, which is no easy task given she can only say "baby," "mama," "dada," and "no."  I think I can work something out with those lyrics. (Maybe a message piece about not having kids out of wedlock: "No mama? No dada?  No baby!")  If not, perhaps Ryan Sutter can help -- poet to songwriter is not much of a stretch.  My other option is to just sell her outright to a rap star.  I think she would fit in well on Snoop's reality show and Boss Lady seems nice enough.  

Does anyone have Jay-Z's number or is he yachting in St. Bart for the twelfth time this year?

PS - What happened to the "Doggy Dog" part of Snoop's name?  And what is Sean Combs going by these days?  Puffy?  Puff Daddy? Mr. Puff?  I need to brush up on these things if I'm going to be momager to a budding rap star. (Given I'll also be her lyricist do you think I'm entitled to more like 30 percent?)