Prince’s sister, Tyka Nelson, has died at the age of 64.
The singer did not appear at her farewell concert in New York on June 7, which would’ve been Prince’s 66th birthday, due to illness and the show proceeded without her.
Her son, President Nelson, confirmed to Minneapolis’ Star Tribune on Monday, Nov. 4, that she had passed away, though he did not reveal her cause of death.
“She had her own mind. She’s in a better place,” said Sharon Nelson, Tyka’s half-sister.
“Our family is very saddened to share the news of my cousin Tyka Evene Nelson who passed away this morning,” her cousin, Charles “Chazz” Smith, posted on Facebook and X.
Tyka had planned to publish her memoir
Tyka released four albums between 1988 and 2011 and had reached No. 33 on the Billboard Hot R’n’B/Hip-Hop chart in 1988 with “Marc Anthony’s Tune.” She had planned to publish a memoir about her life.
Music icon Prince died on April 21, 2016, at the age 57 of an accidental overdose of fentanyl at his Paisley Park home in Chanhassen, Minn.
Days earlier, on April 14, Prince played his final concert in Atlanta. On his flight home the next morning, his private jet had to make an emergency landing after he became unresponsive.
Tyka spoke to him not long after the health scare, which he brushed off as dehydration. What she didn’t know was that would be the last time she would see her sibling.
She said she tried to get the “Purple Rain” hitmaker to open up about his health but that he avoided her questions.
“A couple of times I said, ‘How are you really?’ ” she told the Star Tribune. “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.”
In fact, Prince didn’t speak about much during what would be their final conversation.
“He kept avoiding questions,” she recalled. “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.”
However, Prince connected more frequently with Sharon, with whom Tyka didn’t have a relationship until after Prince died.
“He asked me [to] find more information about our family,” Tyka recounted. “Prince wanted me to find [half-sister] Sharon’s number. It was like, ‘Send this picture to that person.’ ‘OK. What for?'”
Tyka is survived by her sons, President and Sir, sisters Sharon and Norrine Nelson, plus brother Omarr Baker.
