Prince’s sister was “bothered” about his health in the days before he died.
Prince died in 2016
The ‘Purple Rain’ hitmaker passed away from an accidental fentanyl overdose at his Paisley Park estate in Minnesota in April 2016 but shortly before then, he’d postponed two concerts due to influenza and then his private plane had to make an emergency landing so he could receive medical treatment after becoming unresponsive, and Tyka Nelson has recalled going to visit him shortly afterwards.
She told the Star Tribune newspaper: “There was a lady who wanted to hug him and the protector in me stood up — the lady was taller than me — the bodyguards came over and got her. Prince looked at me, ‘What you gonna do?’ So that made us smile.
“I said, ‘Do you hear how you kick that piano? You do it just like Daddy.’ He said, ‘Yeah, I do.’ He walked like Daddy. His sense of humor was Daddy. I think he’s built like Mom, in the middle he’s longer.”
When she hugged her brother, Tyka recalled thinking he had lost weight.
She said: “A couple of times I said, ‘How are you really?’ He didn’t go into anything with me. That was bothering me, and he knew it was but that was all he wanted to tell me. I don’t want to go into that.”
Four days before he passed away, the ‘Raspberry Beret’ singer phoned his sibling, but she got “mad” when he began dodging her questions.
She recalled: “He kept avoiding questions. I kept getting mad. I felt like ‘talk to me for two seconds.’ He’d change the subject, make a joke and then we’d both laugh. He asked me could I find more information about our family. Prince wanted me to find Sharon’s number. I didn’t question it. It was like ‘send this picture to that person.’ OK. What for?”
The 64-year-old singer is still mourning her brother and the other losses in her family.
She said: “A very small part is grieving. It took me a long time. Because he was the last link for me to people on this earth — it was my mom, my dad and my brother.”
