Voletta Wallace, mother of rapper Notorious B.I.G. and steward of his legacy, dies at 78

Voletta Wallace, the mother of the late rapper Notorious B.I.G. who worked to elevate his short-lived but influential career to hip-hop greatness, has died. She was 78.

“We suffered a tremendous loss today. Our mother, our matriarch, the woman who dedicated herself to uplifting her son, Christopher Wallace, and preserving his legacy has passed,” Wallace’s family said Friday on her Facebook page. “It is with immense sadness that we share this news with you, and ask that you give our family the space and time needed to grieve this monumental loss. Thank you for your continued outpouring of love, prayers and condolences in this difficult time.”

Wallace died Friday morning in Stroudsburg, Penn., the Monroe County coroner, Thomas Yanac, confirmed to the Associated Press. She died of natural causes in hospice care at home, he said. Yanac did not immediately respond to The Times’ requests for comment.

Wallace’s son, who was also known as Biggie, was gunned down in 1997 following a music industry party in the Mid-Wilshire district, just two weeks before his seminal album “Life After Death” was released. His mother worked to safeguard the “Hypnotize” rapper’s legacy and pass on his wealth to her grandchildren, “Notorious” star Christopher Jordan “C.J.” Wallace and daughter T’yanna Dream Wallace. The family also filed a number of lawsuits alleging wrongful death and conspiracy.

She and her family also sued the city of Los Angeles, alleging that officials covered up police involvement in the rapper’s slaying. A federal judge dismissed that lawsuit in 2010 after lawyers on both sides said they had reached an agreement allowing for the lawsuit to be filed at a later date. The family brought several other lawsuits stemming from the killing, which remains unsolved.

Wallace, a Jamaican immigrant, worked as a preschool teacher and was a single mother. Her son, who was 24 when he died, was killed just six months after rival rapper Tupac Shakur was gunned down in Las Vegas. The Brooklyn emcee and “Big Poppa” rapper, born Christopher Wallace, was among the most successful acts launched by embattled music mogul Sean “Diddy” Combs. Six months after his death, his mother took the stage at the MTV Video Music Awards to accept the prize for rap video (“Hypnotize”) on his behalf.

“I know if my son was here tonight, the first thing he would have done is say, ‘Big up to Brooklyn,’” she said.

Two years later, she and Shakur’s mother, Afeni Shakur, put on a united front at the 1999 MTV Video Music Awards to “stand united as mothers preserving their [sons’] legacies.

“The fact that we are even standing here shows what the power of faith, friends, family, loved ones and fans can do to bring us all closer,” Wallace said.

The matriarch also worked with the mothers of other late young musicians — Aaliyah, TLC’s Lisa “Left Eye” Lopes and Jam Master Jay, among them — through the Christopher Wallace Memorial Foundation and its B.I.G. (“Books Instead of Guns”) Night Out.

“It is our way of saying, ‘Keep your head up,”’ Wallace told the Associated Press in 2003. “It’s the foundation’s way just to let these parents know that we love them.”

When Combs fell from grace last year, Wallace was among those who spoke out against the music producer after a video of him attacking his ex-girlfriend Cassie Ventura surfaced and made her “sick to [her] stomach.”

“I don’t want to believe the things that I’ve heard, but I’ve seen [the video],” Wallace told Rolling Stone last May. “I pray that he apologizes to her. I hope that I see Sean one day and the only thing I want to do is slap the daylights out of him. And you can quote me on that. Because I liked him. I didn’t want to believe all the awful things, but I’m so ashamed and embarrassed.”

Biggie, who released his debut album “Ready to Die” with Bad Boy Records in 1994, was posthumously inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020, one of his many achievements that his mother highlighted on her social media accounts that she largely dedicated to him. Last year, she marked “Hypnotize” reaching 1 billion streams on Spotify after its 1997 release.

In an early 1997 profile in The Times, Biggie, describing his own reformation, said: “What I’m doing now is right. I’m taking care of my mother, my kids and my peers. It’s legal, and I’m just using a talent that I have to express myself and get paid, so it’s only right that I follow that righteous road.”

In 2005, Wallace published a memoir, “Biggie: Voletta Wallace Remembers Her Son, Christopher Wallace, aka Notorious B.I.G.,” to pay tribute to Biggie, describing losing him so young as feeling like “a 100-pound lead weighing down in my chest.” The Atria-published book included never-before-published photographs and a foreword from Biggie’s widow, singer Faith Evans. The book charted her son’s climb to stardom and how Wallace worked to keep “her bright, precocious son on the straight and narrow.” In it, she also condemned Biggie’s friends whom she claimed treated her with little respect after he died, as well as her ongoing quest to identify her son’s killers.

In 2021, she worked as an executive producer on the Netflix documentary “Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell.” Prior to that, she served as a producer on the 2009 biopic “Notorious,” in which Angela Bassett played her, and Biggie’s son C.J. played a younger version of him. Jamal Woolard starred as the elder version of the rapper. She visited the set nearly every day, and although she loved the final film, she said, it also made her angry and sad.

“I learned a lot … about my son — a lot that I never knew. But I still love him because he was from [my heart] and the love is still here,” she told CinemaBlend in 2009. “You can’t change love.”

To mark Biggie’s 50th birthday, she and the rapper’s children, along with collaborators Lil’ Kim and Lil’ Cease, got together at the Empire State Building when it changed its colors to red and white in his honor. New York also commemorated the rapper with a special edition MetroCard and an orchestral tribute to his music at Lincoln Center, Variety reported.