The Notorious B.I.G.’s Mom Voletta Wallace Dead at 72

Voletta Wallace, the mother of the late rapper Notorious B.I.G., has died.

The Monroe County Coroner confirmed with PEOPLE that Voletta, the mother of Christopher Wallace, died of natural causes at home under hospice care on Friday, Feb. 21. TMZ was first to report the news. She was 72.

Born in Jamaica, she and Biggie’s father Selwyn George raised Christopher in Brooklyn. Selwyn left his family when Biggie was only 2 years old, leaving Voletta, a preschool teacher, to raise him on her own, per Yahoo!.

She would watch her son become a rapper and finally break out in the late 80s. Voletta made an appearance in Biggie’s “Juicy” music video in 1994 and inspired the lyrics “She loves to show me off of course/smiles every time my face is up in The Source,” Revolt reported.

After her only child Biggie’s death in 1997, she spent her life celebrating his music and overseeing his estate, which is reportedly worth $160 million. Voletta would eventually pass down the estate’s earnings to Biggie’s children T’yanna Wallace and C.J. Wallace.

She would also continue to seek justice for Biggie’s killing. “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.”

Voletta also spoke about how she connected with her son through his music after he died. “After his passing, I heard a lot of positive and negative things that were being said about him. As a mother, I only wanted to hear positive things because I’m biased,” she said.

“I decided then I wanted to know more about his music. I read something in a magazine about him where the writer said something like, ‘What do people expect when you give a bum from the ghetto a million dollars?’ I was very hurt by that.”

She continued, “I never raised my son to be a bum or a drug dealer. So I listened to his music and I asked a lot of questions. I cried like a baby while listening because what I heard was an intelligent human being.”

She served as the producer for the 2009 movie about Biggie titled Notorious and was portrayed by Angela Bassett.

In 2020, Voletta celebrated her son’s induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. “Today, I’m feeling great,” she told Billboard at the time.

“As a mother, I’m extremely proud of his accomplishments. You know, I still see such a young man at a young age, and sadly, he’s not here to witness all this. But it’s an astute honor, and as a mother, I’m just elated for that.”

“Many of [his songs] speak truth,” she continued of Biggie. “It might be gritty, and maybe the language is so out there, but he was honest. There was nothing fake about what he was doing. I think for such a young man to resonate such honesty in his lyrics is awesome.”

In September 2024 when Biggie’s music hit 2.5 billion all-time plays on Apple Music, Voletta posted about the achievement on Instagram, thanking fans. Her most recent Instagram post was about Biggie’s millions of listeners on Spotify.