Prince’s sister Tyka Nelson, 64, dies six months after she was forced to miss her retirement concert due to ill health

Prince’s sister, the singer Tyka Nelson, has died aged 64, her family have confirmed. 

Tyka’s son President Nelson first shared the news of her death with The Star Tribune but no cause of death or further details were given.

A Facebook post from Charles ‘Chazz’ Smith added: ‘Our family is very saddened to share the news of my cousin Tyka Evene Nelson who passed away this morning.’

The daughter of John L. Nelson and Mattie Shaw Nelson, Tyka was Prince’s only full sibling. Sharon Nelson, her sister told the Tribune on Monday: ‘She had her own mind. She’s in a better place.’

Tyka was taken ill earlier this year and was forced to miss her own retirement and farewell concert in June at the Dakota in New York. 

Between 1988 and 2011, she released four albums titled Royal Blue in 1988, Yellow Moon, Red Sky in 1992, A Brand New Me in 2008, and Hustler in 2011.

‘I’m getting older, the singer told the Minnesota Star Tribune before her final show. ‘I really wasn’t a singer. I’m a writer. I just happen to be able to sing. I enjoy singing.’

Tyka also revealed earlier this year that she was working on a memoir. 

She made her last public performance in Australia, in 2018 with a Prince tribute show.

Ahead of the 2018 show, Tyka spoke about the influence her late brother, who died in 2016 aged 57 from an accidental fentanyl overdose, has had on her own musical career.

In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, she revealed that she had sought comfort in her brother’s loss though his music.  

She went on to explain that her first song was recorded as tribute to her brother and their parents.

Titled End Of The Road, the song was produced exactly one year after his passing, and recorded at his Paisley Park Headquarters.

‘That song was my way of telling the world how I was feeling. And me doing what he had begged me to do all those years, to go to Paisley Park to record,’ she shared with the publication. 

While Prince was adamant that Tkya should start her own recording career, Tyka said that she refused to encroach upon his space in the fame game. 

‘I hadn’t wanted to before because I wanted a separate (musical) identity; I knew he could make music but didn’t know if I could,’ she admitted. 

During a 2017 interview Tyka revealed she predicted her brother was going to die three years before his passing. 

She explained that she ‘sensed’ the worst was coming after her musical icon brother rang her one day and said he had ‘done everything I’ve come to do’.

Speaking on ITV’s Lorraine about Prince’s drug overdose, Tyka admitted the appearance was the first time she hasn’t used drugs and alcohol to ‘mask the pain’ of her grief. 

Tyka told stand-in host Christine Lampard: ‘I was at McDonald’s and I got a phone call from an unknown number.

‘He said, ‘Is this Tyka? It’s Prince here’, and I said, ‘After all this time I know your voice, I know who you are’.

‘We were just walking and talking and he said, ‘I think I’ve done everything I’ve come to do’, so that was him telling me it was time.’

She explained that from that moment onwards, she had been ‘waiting’ for his tragic passing.

‘I thought I’m going to buy earrings for his funeral, I’m buying a necklace for his funeral and I’m planning this, I’m telling all my relatives Prince is passing, and so it took an actual three years from the time I got the call at McDonald’s.

‘So when I got the call that he had passed, I knew immediately what they meant because I was just kind of waiting for that day.’

Tyka added: ‘I don’t know if it’s Native American history – we do sense things as a people.’

She also opened up about her ‘struggles’, admitting she had been going through harrowing ‘ups and downs’ since Prince’s death aged 57. 

‘I had the hardest time [out of all her siblings]. We had spent all of our lives together. It probably only hit me last October,’ she said at the time.

‘I still have my days, but it’s getting better. I can see myself at the concert, the first time I heard the demo tape.’

Tyka bravely revealed: ‘This is the first time I’ve not used drugs and alcohol to mask the pain of grief.

‘This is the first time what I’m feeling has come out in music, not drugs and alcohol.’

Tyka and her brother were close in his final years after a difficult stretch in their relationship when Tyka was struggling with an addiction to crack cocaine.

She explained that when her parents died she fell off the wagon, but Prince supported her and helped her financially when she went to rehab.   

Tyka also divulged the story behind the three beaded braids on the right-hand side of her hair, which symbolise her late mother, father and Prince.

She revealed that when she dies her braid on left-hand side would be moved over to join the others on the right. 

Prince’s six siblings were named his legal heirs after he died in 2016 with no living children or spouse and no will in accordance to Minnesota law.

Tyka along with Omarr Baker and Alfred Jackson sold their interests to Primary Wave in the years since.