If there was anything wrong with his health, Prince didn't let it show in the performances he gave leading to his death. However, according to his personal chef, the last few months of his life, the singer was fighting sore throats and upset stomachs.
Ray Roberts started cooking for Prince in 2013, alongside with his wife, after an informal tryout with a few other chefs. Since then, he had been making almost all of the singer's meals, cooking up masterpieces in Paisley Park's restaurant-grade kitchen fit for an extraordinary individual such as the Purple One.
"It felt like he wasn't himself probably the last month or two," said Roberts, adding that there were no visible hints that Prince was sick but that his diet had been changing.
Typically, the chef whipped up salads and soups for the singer, particularly including roasted beets and a pesto broccolini dish. When a show was coming up, Roberts would dial back on the sweets to help Prince be more active.
There was never any meat, however, in the singer's meals. Not only did he not eat meat, but you also couldn't eat it in his presence. According to Roberts, if anybody wanted meat, they could have it, but they would have to eat their meal in the parking lot.
In addition, Prince started requesting smoothies and fresh juices. Throat and stomach ailments are not unusual in cold weather, so this doesn't seem out of place, but Roberts noted that the requests lasted for weeks at a time.
The last time Roberts saw Prince was the night before the singer passed away. He had cooked a kale and spring vegetable salad and a roasted red pepper bisque, which the singer never got around to eating. When Roberts returned to Paisley Park for Prince's memorial service some days later, the meal was in the refrigerator, looking exactly as he had served it.
Prince didn't leave a will, so it is unclear who will be in charge of his estate, but state law says that it should be split among his sister Tyka Nelson and their five half-siblings. This also puts in limbo the fate of more than 2,000 songs the singer apparently has locked up in a vault in Paisley Park. It is said that there's enough material in that vault for a Prince album to be released every year for a century.
An investigation is still underway to determine the singer's cause of death, but so far, the police have ruled out suicide. One angle the authorities are looking at, however, is a drug overdose.
