Notorious B.I.G.’s Mother, Voletta Wallace, Dies at 72

Voletta Wallace, the mother of late rapper Notorious “Biggie Smalls” B.I.G. and the steward of his legacy and estate upon his 1997 murder, died Friday morning, reported TMZ. She was 72-years-old. According to the report, Wallace died of natural causes under home hospice in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. Her son’s estimated $160 million estate will be inherited by his two children, T’yanna Wallace and C.J. Wallace. Born in Jamaica, Wallace raised Biggie, real name Christopher Wallace, in Brooklyn’s Bed-Stuy and Clinton Hill neighborhood and was a struggling single mother. In interviews and in his music, Biggie frequently discussed his rise from poverty to becoming a successful rapper, with Wallace keeping his legacy alive long after his death through documentaries about his life and feature films. Although her son’s killers were never brought to justice, Wallace held out hope for closure. “As long as I have life there’s hope,” she told Entertainment Weekly in 2021 while promoting the Netflix documentary Biggie: I Have a Story to Tell. “I’ll never give up. And I hope when I’m not in this world anymore, my friends and family will carry on the fight. There is always hope.”