Prince’s sister Tyka Nelson has tragically died.
The 64-year-old’s son President Nelson confirmed the heartbreaking news in an emotional statement on Monday. Their cousin named Charles “Chazz” Smith on Facebook, also said: “Our family is very saddened to share the news of my cousin Tyka Evene Nelson who passed away this morning.”
Tyka was a singer like her sibling Prince and released four albums between 1988 and 2011. Last years she had planned to perform a farewell concert in Dakota, New York before she retired, however she fell ill, meaning the performance had to go on without her.
President first announced his mum’s death with The Star Tribune but gave no other details about the circumstances. Her cause of death has yet to be revealed. After having to give up on her show in New York, Tyka told the Minnesota Star Tribune in June: “I really wasn’t a singer. I’m a writer. I just happen to be able to sing. I enjoy singing.”
She’d also revealed she was working on a memoir, after making her last public performance in Australia, in 2018, two years following the death of the Purple Rain hitmaker, reports the Mirror. Following her passing, her sister Sharon has said: “She had her own mind. She’s in a better place.”
Numerous Prince fans have taken to social media to pay their respects. “Just hearing that Tyka Nelson, sister of music legend #Prince, has passed away. Our hearts are with her family during this difficult time. Please respect their privacy as they mourn”, one of them notably wrote on X.
Back in June, Tyka revisited her final moments with Prince as she recalled their last phone conversation had taken place just four days before he was found dead at his Paisley Park Studios home. Tyka remembered: “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.”
Tyka then recalled the last time she saw her brother, during his April 2016 hospitalisation, after his plane had made an emergency landing. “There was a lady who wanted to hug him and the protector in me stood up — the lady was taller than me”, she’d explained before adding: “The bodyguards came over and got her. Prince looked at me [like], ‘What you gonna do?’ So that made us smile.”
But as she detailed she would write a memoir about her and the family she shared with Prince, Tyka made it clear she had no knowledge of the star’s health hassles, though she noticed he had lost a considerable amount of weight during their last ever encounter.
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