Pitchfork

OK. So. Erykah Badu had another baby. That's probably the big, important news here. She gave birth to a baby girl at home in Brooklyn yesterday morning, and by all accounts the kid is healthy. No name yet. Congrats, etc. But the part of this story that everyone is going to remember is the way Badu and the baby's father, blog-rap enigma Jay Electronica, let the world know about the birth: They Twittered it.

Both Badu and Jay have protected their Twitters, so you had to have been among Badu's 4595 followers or Jay's 4560 followers to keep up on all the baby-related goings-on this weekend. Because, you know, privacy and all. But someone at MTV News must be among those followers, since this article gives us the complete TMI blow-by-blow.

According to MTV, Badu started things off with "Morning, I'm in labor," then told all her Twitter followers about the length of time between the contractions. Then she disappeared from Twitter until the baby was actually born, for understandable reasons. Jay, however, stayed on his Twitter grind throughout the experience, starting things out thusly: "Labor has begun. Stand back. No hospitals. No doctors. No medicine. We're waiting for the midwife to show." Um, where the fuck was the midwife?

Jay would go on to Twitter about Badu's water breaking and how much she was dilated. And then this Twitter-bomb: "I see the head, full of hair." He also sent a Twitter-message to the producer Just Blaze: "You should be here." Just Blaze, ever diplomatic, managed not to Twitter back with "Um, that's OK, I'm good."

Later, from Jay: "Feb. 1 2009 my first child, my daughter born at 130 PM exactly. It's the happiest day of my life." Aw. And then, from Badu: "I can't believe it's over. Home birth, no painkillers, about five hours, she was a little past due date, but I didn't mind waiting. Breath."

Great news about the baby and all, but this has to be the weirdest leap any major artist has ever taken into the post-everything Web 2.0 universe. The sense of mystery and remove that great artists once projected has now given way to this rampant, almost pathological oversharing, and now pretty much anyone with an internet connection can learn about every squishy moment of Erykah Badu's labor. Maybe it's time for the artists of the world to get off the damn computer.

Badu already has two kids from previous relationships, one with OutKast's Andre 3000 and one with the West Coast rap legend the D.O.C. If they'd had Twitter a few years ago, the world might never have looked at Andre the same.