Purple tears are falling after the death of Prince’s sister, Tyka Nelson, who passed away at 64 on Monday.
Her death — eight years after her legendary older brother died in 2016 — was announced to the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
There was no cause of death given, although the Minneapolis-based singer had been in failing health for some time. She had retired from music but was still working on her memoir at the time of her death.
Born Tyka Evene Nelson on May 18, 1960, she was the only full sibling of Prince Rogers Nelson, with the two sharing musician parents: jazz pianist John L. Nelson and singer Mattie Della Shaw.
Four years after Prince began his revolutionary reign with his 1984 blockbuster “Purple Rain,” Nelson launched her own recording career with 1988’s “Royal Blue.”
She would follow that up with three more LPs: 1992’s “Yellow Moon, Red Sky,” 2008’s “A Brand New Me” and 2011’s “Hustler.”
After announcing her retirement, Nelson was scheduled to perform at a farewell concert at the Dakota, a Minneapolis jazz club, in June, but she was too ill to attend, and the event went on without her.
“I’m getting older,” Nelson told the Minneapolis Star Tribune before the show. “I really wasn’t a singer. I’m a writer. I just happen to be able to sing. I enjoy singing.”
Nelson gave her last public performance in Australia in 2018.
“She had her own mind,” her half-sister Sharon Nelson told the outlet on Monday evening. “She’s in a better place.”
Nelson last talked to Prince four days before he died from an accidental fentanyl overdose on April 21, 2016.
“He kept avoiding questions. I kept getting mad,” she revealed. “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.”
But Nelson didn’t realize the enormity of her brother’s impact until after he passed.
“I didn’t know Prince was that big,” she said, recalling a London exhibition honoring the “Let’s Go Crazy” rocker in 2017. “They lined up to tell me stories. Women would tell me, ‘I’m going to kill myself and then I put on this [Prince] song or heard it on the radio and I didn’t want to die.’ That’s so wonderful. So now you’re going to make me cry.”
Tyka and Prince also had five half-siblings: Sharon, Norrine and John Nelson (who died in 2021), Alfred Jackson (who died in 2019) and Omarr Baker.
Tyka is survived by two sons, President and Sir, and five grandchildren.
