Ten years after the death of Prince, a jaw-dropping account from inside his inner circle is pulling back the curtain on what may have been happening in his final year.
Before his death on April 21, 2016, prior to the world knowing about fentanyl, and ahead of investigators laying out the timeline, there were moments, according to those closest to him, that did not add up.
Moments of confusion. Forgotten conversations. Plans were made and then erased.
“I knew something was wrong,” BrownMark, the bassist for Prince’s groundbreaking band Prince & The Revolution, said in an exclusive interview with the digital show “Let it Be Known.” “Something was not right with his memory and his behavior.”
According to medical experts, early signs tied to dementia and Alzheimer’s can include forgetting recently learned information, repeating conversations, confusion about people and places, and an inability to follow through on plans. BrownMark said he witnessed behavior that tracked with those warning signs, and it started with what should have been a routine call.
It came out of nowhere.
After years of what he described as a brotherhood that could turn volatile, Prince had been talking about him again. A mutual connection, Paisley Park janitor Jim Lundstrom, called BrownMark with a message.
“He says, ‘Mark, I have a feeling that he’s going to get in touch with you because he won’t stop talking about you,’” BrownMark recalled.
Prince, he said, felt bad. Regretful. Ready to make things right.
Not long after, the phone rang.
“He says, ‘I want you to fly to Minneapolis. Putting some things together. I want to see if you want to be involved,’” BrownMark recalled.
For the bassist, that was all it took. Their relationship had always been complicated, brother to brother, but rooted in something real.
“We were both alphas,” he said. “We were always like that.”
He dropped everything in California and went.
And then, things took a turn he never expected.
“He forgot that he brought me there.”
BrownMark said he sat in a hotel for weeks. No calls from Prince, no direction, no explanation. Just silence.
“I don’t have a bat number. I don’t know how to get a hold of you. I’ve been sitting here. I don’t know what’s going on,” he recalled saying after running into drummer John Blackwell Jr. in the lobby.
Blackwell made the call.
“Hey, you know, BrownMark’s sitting here in the lobby.”
Prince’s response stunned him.
“‘What? What’s he doing there? Oh, you brought him here?’ And he goes, ‘Oh, I forgot.’”
At that moment, BrownMark said, it told him everything he needed to know.
When he finally got to Paisley Park, he said the signs were impossible to ignore.
“That’s when I knew something was wrong,” he hedged. “Something was not right with his memory and his behavior.”
The two talked. Reminisced.
Prince told him, “This is your place too… you helped me build this,” BrownMark recalled.
He spoke about forming a new group, chasing that Revolution sound again, that “bottom end” that would rumble like it used to.
BrownMark was in. “I said, okay, I’m down.” Then he went home.
And waited.
“I was like, is this dude gonna call? He probably forgot that we had the conversation.”
Months passed. Another call came. BrownMark packed up, moved to Minneapolis again. And again, nothing.
No rehearsals. No sessions. No follow-through. Then came the moment that sealed it. BrownMark walked into Paisley Park one day and saw Prince filming. The beloved artist saw him and froze.
“You could see the panic in his face because you can see he just remembered what he had done,” BrownMark recalled. “You could see him saying, ‘Oh man, wait a minute. I moved him here.’”
For BrownMark, the pattern was now clear.
“His memory was like really, really shot at that point,” the bassist observed.
Memory and Medication?
The bassist does not claim Prince had dementia or Alzheimer’s, only pointing to what the medical examiner said that played a major role, the medication.
BrownMark nearly died in 2022 and now lives on medication that he says has affected his own memory.
“My memory is shot… if I don’t write stuff down or set an alarm, it’s gone,” he said, adding that his own experience changed how he views what he saw.
“Man, it just clouds your memory,” BrownMark said of certain medications. “And I think that’s what was happening with him because he was heavily relying upon opioids for his pain, for his hip.”
Prince, he said, would never have admitted it.
“He ain’t gonna let nobody see him sweat,” BrownMark stated convincingly. “He’s not going to tell anybody.”
That silence may have hidden more than anyone realized.
In April 2016, Prince was found unresponsive inside an elevator at Paisley Park. He was 57. Investigators later determined he died from an accidental overdose of fentanyl, a powerful synthetic opioid.
For BrownMark, the pieces now connect in a way they didn’t then.
“Fentanyl. There you go,” he said.
The music remains. The legend remains.
But 10 years later, the picture coming into focus from those who were there is no longer just about genius.
It is about what may have been slipping away in plain sight.
“I’m a very observant person,” BrownMark said. “I saw it immediately. I said, ‘Yeah, something’s not right there.’”
