There isn’t much in this life that makes me gasp, but reading the news of Prince’s death certainly did. It seemed so unreal that I was almost positive it was a hoax.
As the reality of his death set in it began to feel like a tragedy, more so even than the death of Bowie, who I loved.
I choked up.
This sucks.
RIP Prince.
Take drug talk with a grain of salt for now.
He could have had an aneurysm or sudden heart arrhythmia. He could have been ill with something and died from that. It could be something I can’t think of right now because I’m not a doctor or coroner.
He could have died from legal prescription drugs taken for legitimate reason, it can and does happen.
Really, though, he had a reputation for clean leaving and not doing drugs. I think too many people hear “rock star dies” and leaps to conclusions.
Let’s wait for the toxicology report, OK?
I can’t remember the last celebrity death that shocked me as much as this one. I never in a million years expected to outlive him.
What a terrible loss. RIP Prince.
What is being alleged is that he needed double hip replacement surgery, which he repeatedly put off. The Percocet was for that pain. Allegedly.
So, irresponsible. But not recreationally irresponsible.
Due to the JW belief against blood transfusions, no less. If true, it was his clean living that did him in.
Unsurprisingly, this was Google’s first autocomplete option for “anima…”
I know it is morbid to play the guess what the cause of death was game … but I’d bet against drugs either recreationally used or for pain … and more on a viral myocarditis type of thing. That flu-like prodrome fits.
There is a method that I’ve heard done for JWs. They take out the blood ahead of time from the person they need to use it on. Then they only use that blood to resupply.
Of course, I’m not sure how constantly having Percocet in your system would affect this method.
Forget what you might have heard about a denial-of-service attack: The Straight Dope is, even the Dope Hamsters are Prince fans. They spent the past day and a half striking curious poses. It was the only way they could cope.
That’s it, the '80s are now officially over.
RIP, Prince. 
The local talk radio stations have had all kinds of people calling in telling their stories of their encounters with him. He was always in the community doing cool stuff for people.
He liked to attend Vikings, Twins, Timberwolves and Wild games. When the Lynx (WNBA) won the championship he was there and after the game had limos waiting to take them to Paisley Park for a suprise private party.
A few weeks back he was at Chanhassen dinner theatre to see a Ray Charles tribute and snuck on stage briefly to jam with the band.
Such a powerful creative force, so suddenly, totally unexpected…
…and to be perfectly honest, generationally too damn close.
Today GM placed this in various print and online media outlets.
*Definitely *some others. Sheila E, Morris Day & The Time, Vanity and Appolonia. Also worked with Chaka Khan, Sheena Easton, Cyndi Lauper, and many more. He was everywhere in the '80’s.
I listened to his music for hours yesterday to help me deal, but that may have made it even harder. 
The last time I stood in front of my TV yelling “NO!” and crying was when NBC was live broadcasting the 2nd Tower getting hit and them going down. Yesterday I had WGN on and I heard the initial announcement that a death had been reported but they knew nothing further. I was like, oh, Prince had a little old lady as a maid or something and she keeled over. Didn’t even fathom it was going to be him when they confirmed reality 30 minutes later.
Had to text my friend I was meeting and push back 30 minutes so I could get myself back together. Prince was a large part of the soundtrack through all my teens and early 20’s. I got past the initial shock and am still just numb.
I never post drunk, but I am drinking purple aviations, wishing I’m misspent my youth more and thinking I need to drink more while listening to the Current stream Prince. I sobbed though Crimson and Clover. This is what happens when you came of age in Minneapolis in 1984 and Prince dies.
(Oh, and Thank God the Dope is back, you guys might understand. Or make fun of me.)
I danced my ASS off at 11:59 12/31/99 at Buzz in dc to Prince. Jesus. A tremendous loss.
If the stories are true, his emergency landing a few days ago (less than an hour from his planned destination) was to get a shot of Narcan. I’m assuming the ‘he has the flu’ was just a cover for that and probably wouldn’t have been questioned otherwise.
I really don’t want to believe it was drug related either, but at the moment it seems to be heading in that direction. Hopefully, if it is drug related, it’s turns out to be that he OD’d because he was in so much pain (but we may never know that) or he just had a reaction to the drugs or combination of drugs he was on. Maybe after the scare on the airplane he took himself off the drugs and had a complication due to withdrawal.
All we know is that we’ll know more in a few days or weeks when we have the ME’s report. But my guess is that if it was something not drug related the ME wouldn’t be keeping quiet until they got the tox screen back. I mean, if he had an aneurysm or the flu/pneumonia got him, I’d guess they’d mention that today even if they said they were still waiting on tox reports.
Again, for the record, I’d really like it to not be drug related, but the emergency landing the fact that OD’d on Percocet just a few days ago is making hard to think otherwise.
It could be he had a cardiac event and the ME is waiting to verify whether or not drugs were part of the cause (in other words, something not so clear-cut). I’m not going to jump to conclusions.
No one’s said it yet?
And they could be. Or they could just be stories.
Look he was of a career path in which OD is a not uncommon cause of death. Never a bad bet when a celebrity dies suddenly at a relatively young age that drugs were involved.
But boy, if stories are true he had spent the last several years of his life living quite clean. Also could be just stories.
Anyway, viral flu-like prodrome, triggering off an inflammation in the heart muscle with waxing and waning fatigue and then setting off an arrhythmia, fits with what was initially reported, without cover-up conspiracy required. Heart often grossly normal and would only be determined after the slides are processed. Sometimes I hear a difficult postmortem diagnosis even then. Not like an MI or an aneurysm or chronic heart failure.
I’m with Johnny here … not willing to accept unsourced media stories as fact.
