Kelly Price is asking for prayers as she mourns the loss of her mother, who passed away over the weekend. The Grammy-nominated singer and songwriter confirmed the news in a statement on The Rickey Smiley Morning Show on Tuesday (Oct. 20). She was 69.
“It is with so many unexplainable emotions that I must make the acknowledgment that Sunday, Oct. 18, 2020, my mother, Claudia Price-North, took her last breath and said goodbye to the world,” Price stated.
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The cause of her death is currently unknown. Price requested privacy as she and her family process their loss. She also asked people to keep her family in their prayers as they mourn her mother’s loss.
“This is something I wasn’t prepared for, none of us were, and I don’t know that anyone under any circumstances ever could be. Respectfully, I ask for the sake of her husband, her sister, my sister, and myself, along with the rest of the family, that we be given time to process this loss privately. We know that Earth has no sorrow that Heaven cannot heal. We need healing right now, so please keep my family in your prayers,” Price continued.
Price also posted the unfortunate news in an Instagram post.
“2020 will not destroy me. 2020 will not take away my faith or my joy,” she captioned. “2020 will be my year of overcoming some of the biggest blows the enemy sent! They formed, but they will not prosper! Neither will they destroy my life. Even with my [broken heart], I know my life, and my times are in His hands.”
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Price started singing in her childhood church choir at six, where her mother served as the musical director. She’d later go on to lend background vocals for R&B artists such as Mariah Carey and Ron Isley. In 1998, Price released her solo debut album, Soul of a Woman.
In 1998, Price learned that both her mother and mother-in-law had been diagnosed with breast cancer, which later claimed her mother-in-law’s life. However, her mother’s diagnosis would go into remission in 2006 after being given two months to live.
Over the years, Price became an advocate for breast cancer awareness, particularly within the minority community. She partnered with the National Breast Cancer Awareness Initiative and donated $250,000 plus proceeds from her single, Love Sets You Free, towards the fight against breast cancer.
The news of Kelly Price’s loss comes just months after the loss of her grandfather Jerome Norman, Jr. to COVID-19 in April 2020. He was 94.
“I’m grateful that I had him for all those years, but it just seems that for everything that he’s lived through, surviving cancer on more than one occasion, surviving a heart attack on more than one occasion, coming through racism, being born in the South, just for the things that he survived, I guess for me it just feels crazy that it would be this that takes him from us,” she told The Core 94 at the time.
Our thoughts and prayers are with Kelly Price and her family.
