An autopsy is scheduled to be performed Friday on the body of seven-time Grammy winner Prince, who was found dead Thursday in the elevator of his Paisley Park estate in Chanhassen, Minn.
The singer's death came six days after he was rushed to an Illinois hospital after falling ill while returning to Minneapolis from a concert in Atlanta. TMZ reported late Thursday that the "Purple Rain" singer had suffered a drug overdose that caused his plane to make an emergency landing in Illinois on April 15, though Prince's rep claimed that he was suffering from the flu. Prince was released from the Illinois hospital several hours after he was admitted.Deputies and medical personnel found the 57-year-old music icon unresponsive when they arrived at his home, and they performed CPR but it was unsuccessful. He was pronounced dead at 10:07 a.m. local time.
The gossip site also reports Prince was spotted making multiple runs to the pharmacy near his home on Wednesday evening prior to his Thursday morning death.
The transcript of the 911 call placed from Prince’s estate was made public late Thursday, and it revealed the caller believed there was little hope Prince could be saved by the time the call was placed. The caller told the 911 dispatcher, “the person is dead here." The caller later told the dispatcher, "it's Prince.”
On Saturday, April 16, Prince hosted a dance party at Paisley Park. Jeremiah Freed, who runs the website drfunkenberry.com and has gotten to know Prince after writing about his events over the years, told the Associated Press that he believed Prince held the party to show everyone he was fine.
Freed didn't have one-on-one time with Prince that night, but Prince made a brief appearance. Freed said the artist showed off a new purple piano he received as a gift, as well as a purple guitar, but seemed upset about the reports of an illness.
"When he had to talk about the stories going on, he didn't seem too pleased. It was kind of like, 'I'm here. I'm good,'" Freed said, adding that Prince told the crowd: "Just wait a few days before saying your prayers."
Prince's studio DJ, Michael Holtz, echoed Freed's comments in an interview with Fox News' Greta van Susteren.
"He didn't look like, you know, there was any signs of the flu taking him down," Holtz said. "He came out and addressed the crowd and asked us, 'Hey, if you hear any more news, give it a couple days before you start wasting prayers' and we all thought, 'Okay, you know, all is good' and he was very happy.
"He looked like the old Prince."
Lars Larson, a 37-year-old Minneapolis man who had worked security for Prince and at Paisley Park events for about six years on and off, said he was at the same dance party. Larson said the singer was on stage briefly and spoke to the crowd before standing by the sound board for 20 minutes and then disappearing for the night.
"He seemed great. He looked like Prince," he said. "The whole point of the show on Saturday was to show he was doing all right."
A week earlier, the singer had canceled concerts in Atlanta because he wasn't feeling well. He rescheduled the show and opened the April 14 performance in Atlanta by apologizing to the crowd shortly after coming on stage.
Shawn Gardner, who attended the Atlanta show and has been to five Prince concerts, said she suspected something was "different" when the singer did not do an encore.
“We were all taken a little aback. He always ends with 'Purple Rain,'” she told FOX411. “And so we stayed chanting for him to come back out to 'Purple Rain' and he did not. You could tell he was different because Prince normally will give you three or four encores especially because he loves the crowd cheering and chanting. My friend and I had even discussed how this concert was different than what we had seen before and definitely we attribute it to him being sick and having the flu.”
In Atlanta, while talking to the crowd between songs, he joked about having been "under the weather," giving a slight smile. His voice seemed a bit weak at times when he spoke, but he sounded fine when singing during his 80-minute show, which included everything from songs made famous by others ("Nothing Compares 2 U") to his finale to the first show of the evening, "Baby, I'm A Star."
He sat at his piano most of the show, but stood up at times to pound the keys and walked around the piano a couple of times, soaking up cheers.
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