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Prince’s Vault of Unreleased Music Drilled Open as Personal Chef Says Singer Fell Ill After Some Dietary Changes

USA Today

USA Today

A Minnesota-based company has assumed temporary control over a vault at Prince’s Paisley Park home. The company drilled open the vault that contains lots of unreleased music.

Bremer Trust in St. Cloud, Minnesota forcibly opened the vault because only the late singer knew the code, KSTP-TV reports.

According to ABC News, the Purple One has so much unheard material that his estate could release an album every year during the next century.

Susan Rogers, a former Prince studio engineer, told Good Morning America, “We could put out more work in a month than most people could do in a year or more.”

She says the vault had shelves housed in a massive room, which filled up quickly. It was sealed with a door that had a big spinning wheel on it.

As the company looks into Prince’s music and other assets, reports say  the singer had no will and that his siblings could lose out on more than half of his fortune. The Daily Signal reports that the federal and state government of Minnesota will assess estate taxes on his assets.

Known as “death taxes,” those on Prince’s estate – which is valued at $300 to $500 million – wouldn’t leave much for his one full sister and five half siblings. Just $1.6 million of the singer’s estate would escape  the state death tax, while $5.45 million would be free from the federal tax. The state tax rate of 16 percent, with the federal tax rate of 40 percent means, over 50 percent of Prince’s estate will be in government hands.

Prince was not married, so there is no spouse to inherit his estate. But that doesn’t mean he didn’t have people who cared for him. His personal chef, Ray Roberts, tells the Associated Press the singer exhibited dietary changes before he died at 57. He was eating less, not keeping hydrated and seemed to be losing weight.

“It felt like he wasn’t himself probably the last month or two,” Roberts said to the AP. “I think he was just struggling with being sick a lot.”

Prince did not eat meat and was known to eat clean. In recent months, Roberts says the singer had sore throats and didn’t seem to feel well for “weeks at a time.” Frequent stomach aches caused Prince to shun meals like roasted beets and minestrone soup in favor of smoothies and fresh juices to soothe his pain.

The chef adds that even with his ailments, the singer never lost his work ethic.

“It was amazing. I don’t think I ever saw him really looking bad ever. He was always on point,” Roberts told the AP.

To help him through the discomfort, including chronic hip pain, Prince was taking medication and allegedly overdosed on Percocet in the days leading to his death. KSTP-TV reports the singer entered an out-patient treatment facility to “move away from” using  pills to treat his hip issue.

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