Prince spent his final days trying to avoid talking to his sister about his health, she revealed.
Tyka Nelson, 64, was his only full sibling, while they shared five half brothers and sisters. In a new interview with the Star Tribune she recalled her last interactions with him before his death on April 21, 2016.
Tyka said she was last in Prince’s company a few days after his private plane made an emergency landing on April 15 so he could be sent to hospital. She visited him once he was back home in Paisley Park, Minneapolis.
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“A couple of times I said, ‘How are you really?’” she reported, noting that, at the time, she wasn’t aware of any problems – although she thought Prince had lost weight when she hugged him. “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.”
They discussed their parents instead, with Tyka saying Prince played piano like their father and adding: “He walked like Daddy. His sense of humor was Daddy. I think he [was] built like Mom; in the middle he [was] longer.”
The pair’s final phone call took place four days before his death. “He kept avoiding questions,” she said. “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.
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“He asked me [to] find more information about our family. Prince wanted me to find [half-sister] Sharon’s number … It was like, ‘Send this picture to that person.’ ‘OK. What for?’”
Tyka – a singer who released four albums in her career, and officially retires after a final event in Minneapolis on Friday (June 8) – said she’d go into more detail in the memoir she’s currently writing.
“We are not there yet,” she explained. “We’ve got a few more chapters [to go]. It’s about me and my family.”
