'How are you really?' Tyka Nelson asked her older brother, Prince, near the end. But he wouldn't answer her directly.
Prince's sister, Tyka Nelson, is sharing details of her last phone call with her late brother.
Before her Minneapolis farewell concert, Tyka, 64, opened up to the Star Tribune about grief and her final conversation with the Purple Rain star. The legendary musician died at the age of 57 on April 21, 2016 after an accidental overdose of fentanyl at his Paisley Park home in Chanhassen, Minnesota.
"He kept avoiding questions. I kept getting mad. I felt like 'talk to me for two seconds,'" Tyka says of her last phone call with Prince, four days before he was found dead.
Tyka is the only sibling who shared the same mother and father as Prince -- Mattie Della Shaw and John Lewis Nelson. They had five other half-brothers and sisters – Sharon L. Nelson, Norrine P. Nelson, John R. Nelson, Omarr Baker and Alfred Jackson. Prince, born Prince Rogers Nelson, was married twice, but both unions ended in divorce, and he had no children.
"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," Tyka says, suggesting Prince wanted to reconnect with his loved ones toward the end.
"Prince wanted me to find Sharon's number. I didn't question it," she adds. "It was like 'send this picture to that person.' OK. What for?"
The last time Tyka saw Prince was at Paisley Park, two nights after his private plane made an emergency landing in Moline, Illinois, and he was hospitalized just six days before his death.
"A couple of times I said, 'How are you really?'" Tyka recalls, noting she hadn't noticed that Prince had any illnesses, though she did realize he'd lost weight after hugging him.
But Prince would dodge her questions.
"He didn't go into anything with me," she continues. "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."
Grieving was a long process for Tyka.
"It took me a long time," she says. "Because he was the last link for me to people on this earth — it was my mom, my dad and my brother."
Prince's friend and drummer, Sheila E., spoke with ET in July 2021 about hitting the road with him.
"It was insane," she said of her time with the artist. "I always wanted to play drums in a rock and roll band, that was one of the things I always wanted to do because I started playing percussion first. And when I told Prince, I said, 'I wanna play drums in a band. I don't wanna be a lead artist anymore. I just wanna go play with people.' And he was like, 'OK, wanna play in my band?' I'm like, 'Sure.' So that's when Sign o' the Times started."
She added, "I started playing drums, like, 'Yes, I get to play rock and roll. I get to play funk.' This was the first time playing an entire set playing drums. I loved it. I had so much fun."
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