To me Erykah Badu rather falls in the category of Lisa Bonet in my mind. Both seem to walk to the beat of their own drummer. So, I really should be surprised when I read the name of her new baby daughter – Twitty Milk.
Erykah (real name Erica Wright) and her boyfriend, rapper Jay Electronica (real name Je’Ri Allah) welcomed their first child together yesterday. Erykah has an eleven year old son, Seven Sirius, from a previous relationship Outkast’s Andre 3000 (real name Andre Benjamin) and four year old daughter, Puma Rose, from a previous relationship with rapper The D.O.C. (real name Tracy Lynn Curry – doesn’t hold much street cred, does it?).
(This image, by Najmudeen,is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License)
Erykah and Jay took a unique approach to celebrity birth by updating Erykah’s fans via Twitter. Twitter is a social network where you can post mini-blogs and that is exactly what Jay did while Erykah was in labor. He sent out messages like “Labor has begun” to keep fans updated. He also sent the message “Everybody stand back. No hospitals. No doctors. No medicine. We’re waiting for the midwife to show.” Hopefully she got there in time!
After informing fans via Twitter when Erykah’s water broke, how far dilated she was, and when she began pushing, he then added the most important mini-blog of all, “”I see the head, full of hair. Feb. 1 2009 my first child, my daughter born at 130 PM exactly. It’s the happiest day of my life.” Even Erykah chimed in later, posting on Twitter that she couldn’t believe it was over and that she did it all without painkillers.
Now, on to the elephant in the room – the name of the baby. I rag on celebrities for choosing weird baby names, but when the celebrity is a bit out there – like Lisa and Erykah – I try to cut them a bit of slack. But really – Twitty Milk? I am sorry, but I can just imagine this poor child being tormented by others in elementary school. Twitty sounds too much like – well, you know, plus it sounds like a nickname for a twit.
Twitty – did that come from Conway Twitty or an abbreviation for Twitter? And, if it was an abbreviation for Twitter, isn’t that carrying it a bit far? Who knows, maybe it is all just a joke, but with kids like Seven and Puma, you can never know!