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Prince Death: Arsenio Hall Says He Knew Of Prince’s Health Problems As He’s Accused Of Giving Him Fatal Drugs

By Patricia Grannum
Published on: 08:54 PST, May 3, 2016

Prince dying may have been a shock to most of the world, but now some of his friends are saying that they knew about the health problems “The Purple One” suffered before he died. One of those friends is Arsenio Hall, Billboard reports.

“It’s interesting, ’cause Prince would have the cane, but I feel like the cane proceeded the pain,” Hall said in an interview with Access Hollywood. “I think that the cane was kinda swaggy before the pain kicked in, but there was a point where he was having some pain, and I never talked about that kind of thing, or got into that kinda stuff. I knew it, but guys don’t [go],’Yo, how your hip, man? You know, guys don’t even have those kind of conversations. But I’m really gonna miss him.”

As Billboard notes, the often reclusive musical superstar appeared twice on The Arsenio Hall Show. The first time was in 1993 when he gave a legendary performance of “Purple Rain.” During the episode, Prince also set a review of his music on fire while the said reviewer was in the audience.

Twenty years later, Arsenio Hall dedicated a whole episode of his relaunched talk show to Prince, even giving fans a chance to ask the artist questions. One of the fans asked Prince what he would have done with his life if he wasn’t a musician.

“I’d want to teach,” Prince said. “There’s a lot of fine musicians in the group right now, and I’m learning from them, so as much as I’d like to teach, I also like to learn.”

NME reports that the Prince and Arsenio Hall friendship is under increased scrutiny after Irish singer, Sinead O’Connor, accused Hall of giving Prince drugs over the years.

“Two words for the DEA investigating where Prince got his drugs over the decades… Arsenio Hall (AKA Prince’s and Eddie Murphy’s b—h),” the “Nothing Compares To You” singer wrote in a Facebook post on Monday.

Prince, born Prince Rogers Nelson, passed away at his Paisley Park complex in Minnesota on April 21. Although an official cause of death has not been confirmed, NME reports that the police say they plan to investigate the possibility that Prince died from an overdose of prescription drugs.

“Anyone imagining Prince was not a long time hard drug user is living in cloud cuckoo land,” O’Connor continued. “Arsenio, I’ve reported you to the Carver County Sheriff’s office. Expect their call. They are aware you spiked me years ago at Eddie Murphy’s house. You best get tidying your man cave.”

But a representative for Arsenio Hall has said that Sinead O’Connor is not telling the truth, The New York Daily News reports. “The statement regarding Arsenio Hall is absolutely false, ridiculous and absurd,” his publicist, Traci Harper, said in a written statement.

Prince penned “Nothing Compares To You,” the song that made Sinead O’Connor famous. Although the song dominated the music charts in 1990, O’Connor has admitted in the past that she and Prince did not get along well at all, The New York Daily News notes.

“I did meet him a couple of times. We didn’t get on at all. In fact, we had a punch-up,” she said in November 2014, according to an article in the Irish Independent.

“He summoned me to his house — and it’s foolish to do this to an Irish woman — he said he didn’t like me saying bad words in interviews. So I told him to f—k off,” she said. “He got quite violent. I had to escape out of his house at 5 in the morning.”

Sinead O’Connor has become known for making inflammatory statements via her Facebook page in recent years. As a previous Inquisitr article reported at the time, O’Connor used her Facebook page to tell the world she had overdosed on drugs and caused a media frenzy last year.

[Photo by Kristian Dowling/Getty Images]

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