Voletta Wallace, mother who shaped the Notorious B.I.G.'s legacy, dies at 78

Voletta Wallace, the mother of Brooklyn rapper the Notorious B.I.G., whose stewardship of her son's career and legacy after he was killed in 1997 helped cement him as a hip-hop legend, died Friday. She was 78.

Wallace died in hospice care at her residence in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, according to a news release from the Monroe County coroner, Thomas Yanac, who confirmed the death. A cause was not specified.

A middle-class immigrant and single mother from Jamaica, Wallace was forced into the hip-hop spotlight after the Notorious B.I.G., born Christopher Wallace and also known as Biggie Smalls, was killed at 24 in a Los Angeles drive-by shooting.

Biggie's death came just six months after the Las Vegas slaying of rapper Tupac Shakur, a onetime friend turned bitter rival, with the killings abruptly ending a formative and fruitful moment in mainstream gangster rap amid a tangled East Coast-West Coast beef that went far beyond music.

For decades, both cases remained unsolved, fueling an ongoing ecosystem of true-crime books, documentaries, articles and more that have attempted to explain the possible links between the two killings, including the involvement of national gangs and crooked cops. (In 2023, prosecutors in Las Vegas charged Duane Keith Davis, a former gang leader known as Keffe D, with murder in the Shakur case; he is set to stand trial later this year.)

Wallace, a preschool teacher, took on the mantle of her son's career almost immediately. Biggie's second album, "Life After Death," came out two weeks after he died; six months later, Wallace accepted the MTV Video Music Award for best rap video ("Hypnotize"), telling the New York crowd, "I know if my son was here tonight, the first thing he would've done is say big up to Brooklyn."

Two years later, she appeared alongside Afeni Shakur, Tupac's mother, at the same awards show, urging unity and the preservation of their sons' legacies.

Wallace would go on to work with other mothers of musicians who died young through her Christopher Wallace Memorial Foundation and its B.I.G. (Books Instead of Guns) Night Out.

"All I want to do is put a book into a child's hand. Because books do not kill," Wallace said in 2003. "Books do not murder. But weapons do."

In 2002, Wallace and her son's widow, singer Faith Evans, filed a wrongful-death suit against the city of Los Angeles, accusing the Los Angeles Police Department of covering up police involvement in the killing. A 2005 trial ended in a mistrial, with a judge ruling that the police had intentionally withheld evidence and ordering the city to pay the estate's legal fees.

An amended version of the suit filed by Biggie's estate in 2007 estimated financial losses at $500 million. The case was dismissed in 2010 to avoid interfering with what the estate called a "reinvigorated" criminal investigation. "The family only wanted justice to be done," a lawyer for the estate said at the time.

Despite the lack of closure in the case, Wallace continued to spread the Notorious B.I.G.'s story across popular culture.

She was credited as a producer -- and played by Angela Bassett as "a saint with a powerful tongue," as one film review put it -- in the 2009 biopic "Notorious," even coaching the actor, Jamal Woolard, who played her son.

"I felt like I sometimes intimidated him during the film," Wallace said. "I felt bad for that, but as a producer my job is to be there."

In a 2021 documentary, "Biggie: I Got a Story to Tell," Wallace recalled her musical influence on her once-shy son from their days in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, where he was exposed to a mix of reggae, jazz and -- her personal favorite -- country music.

"Ever since I was a little girl I liked stories," Wallace said. "When he was a little boy and was growing up, I always had the radio on and tuned in to the country music station. I love my Willie Nelson, Kris Kristofferson and Waylon Jennings. He listened to it all with me because he had no other choice."

Information on survivors was not immediately available.

For years, Wallace was a reliable presence alongside music executive Sean Combs, known as Puff Daddy or Diddy, who helped discover Biggie and also shepherded his legacy after death. But she was unequivocal last year, as Combs was accused of widespread sexual abuse and indicted on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges.

"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," Wallace told Rolling Stone. "Because I liked him. I didn't want to believe all the awful things, but I'm so ashamed and embarrassed."