Voletta Wallace, The Notorious B.I.G.’s Mom, Dead at 78

Voletta Wallace, mother to rap icon The Notorious B.I.G., is dead at 78. Billboard confirmed Wallace’s death with Monroe County Coroner’s Office in Pennsylvania on Friday (Feb. 21).

“Voletta has died, on hospice care, at her residence in Stroudsburg, Penn.,” Monroe County Coroner Thomas Yanac tells Billboard. “Voletta died of natural causes.”

TMZ was the first to report that Wallace had passed away.

A Jamaican immigrant, Wallace gave birth to The Notorious B.I.G. (born Christopher Wallace) on May 21, 1972, in Brooklyn, where she worked as a preschool teacher and raised Biggie as a single mother.

He went on to reach superstar status in a short time as a rapper while signed to Diddy’s Bad Boy Records, where he released a pair of albums, Ready to Die and Life After Death, the latter of which debuted atop the Billboard 200 and arrived just weeks after he was gunned down in Los Angeles on March 9, 1997, at just 24 years old.

Much of the the Brooklyn rap icon’s catalog is etched in rap lore as one of the pillars of East Coast hip-hop during the ’90s “golden era,” including hits such as “Juicy,” “Hypnotize,” “Ten Crack Commandments,” “Going Back to Cali,” “Mo Money Mo Problems” and many more.

Wallace launched the Christopher Wallace Memorial Foundation in her son’s memory and did whatever she could to uphold his legacy and protect his estate while building on the foundation he laid prior to his passing in 1997. She also served as a producer on the Notorious biopic, which brought her son’s life story to the silver screen in 2009. She was portrayed by Angela Bassett in the film.

The Notorious B.I.G. was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2020, and Voletta was present to accept the honor in her son’s place. “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.”

In recent months, Wallace’s Instagram account made posts celebrating her son’s rap achievements, which included 992 million Spotify streams in 2024 and eclipsing 2.5 billion all-time streams on Apple Music.

Voletta Wallace is survived by her grandchildren C.J. Wallace and T’yanna Wallace, who are Biggies kids.