Voletta Wallace, the mother of the late Notorious B.I.G. and founder of the Christopher Wallace Memorial Foundation, has passed away.
On Friday, February 21, TMZ confirmed Wallace died in Stroudsburg, Penn. According to Monroe County Coroner Thomas Yanac, she had been in hospice care and passed away of natural causes. She was 72. Born in Jamaica, Wallace moved to Brooklyn, N.Y. where she and George Latore welcomed their only son, Christopher, into the world. After Latore left the family in 1974, Wallace worked as a preschool teacher and raised her son as a single mom.
Even though her son fell into the drug game at a young age, Wallace watched him transform from an alleged criminal into a budding rap star once he got his big break in the late 1980s. Ms. Wallace became actively involved in Biggie Smalls' music career after he was signed to Bad Boy Records in 1993. She appeared in the music video for his breakthrough hit "Juicy" in 1994 and inspired the infamous line, "She loved to show me off of course/Smiles every time my face is up in The Source."
Voletta Wallace did everything she could to keep her son's legacy alive especially after he was shot and killed in 1997. She took over his estate worth $10 million and grew it into an estimated $160 million. Ms. Wallace eventually passed down earnings from her son's estate to her grandchildren T'yanna Wallace and CJ Wallace. She also produced Biggie's biopic Notorious in 2009 and spent time with Jamal Woolard, who portrayed her son in the film. She continued to boast about her son's accomplishments well after his death including his induction into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in 2020 and the estate's recent venture into the NFT space.
Rest in peace, Voletta Wallace.