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Voletta Wallace, the mother of the Brooklyn rapper the Notorious B.I.G., whose stewardship of her son\u2019s career and legacy after he was killed in 1997 helped cement him as a hip-hop legend, died on Friday. She was 78.<\/p>\n
Ms. Wallace died in hospice care at her residence in Stroudsburg, Pa., according to a news release from the Monroe County coroner, Thomas Yanac. A cause was not specified.<\/p>\n
A middle-class immigrant and single mother from Jamaica, Ms. 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.<\/p>\n
Biggie\u2019s death came just six months after the Las Vegas slaying of the 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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>, a former gang leader known as Keffe D, with murder in the Shakur case; he is set to stand trial later this year.)<\/p>\n Ms. Wallace, a preschool teacher, took on the mantle of her son\u2019s career almost immediately. Biggie\u2019s second album, \u201cLife After Death,\u201d came out two weeks after he died; six months later, Ms. Wallace accepted the MTV Video Music Award<\/a> for best rap video (\u201cHypnotize\u201d), telling the New York crowd, \u201cI know if my son was here tonight, the first thing he would\u2019ve done is say big up to Brooklyn.\u201d<\/p>\n Two years later, she appeared alongside Afeni Shakur<\/a>, Tupac\u2019s mother, at the same awards show, urging unity and the preservation of their sons\u2019 legacies.<\/p>\n Ms. 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.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cAll I want to do is put a book into a child\u2019s hand. Because books do not kill,\u201d Ms. Wallace said in 2003<\/a>. \u201cBooks do not murder. But weapons do.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In 2002, Ms. Wallace and her son\u2019s widow, the 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\u2019s legal fees.<\/p>\n An amended version of the suit filed by Biggie\u2019s estate in 2007 estimated financial losses at $500 million. The case was dismissed in 2010<\/a> to avoid interfering with what the estate called a \u201creinvigorated\u201d criminal investigation. \u201cThe family only wanted justice to be done,\u201d a lawyer for the estate said at the time.<\/p>\n Despite the lack of closure in the case, Ms. Wallace continued to spread the Notorious B.I.G.\u2019s story across popular culture.<\/p>\n She was credited as a producer \u2014 and played by Angela Bassett as<\/a> \u201ca saint with a powerful tongue,\u201d as one film review put it \u2014 in the 2009 biopic \u201cNotorious,\u201d even coaching the actor, Jamal Woolard, who played her son.<\/p>\n \u201cI felt like I sometimes intimidated him during the film,\u201d Ms. Wallace said<\/a>. \u201cI felt bad for that, but as a producer my job is to be there.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In a 2021 documentary, \u201cBiggie: I Got a Story to Tell,\u201d Ms. 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 \u2014 her personal favorite \u2014 country music.<\/p>\n \u201cEver since I was a little girl I liked stories,\u201d Ms. Wallace said<\/a>. \u201cWhen 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Information on survivors was not immediately available.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For years, Ms. Wallace was a reliable presence alongside the music executive Sean Combs, known as Puff Daddy or Diddy, who helped discover Biggie and also shepherded his legacy after his death. But she was unequivocal last year, as Mr. Combs was accused of widespread sexual abuse and indicted<\/a> on federal racketeering and sex trafficking charges.<\/p>\n \u201cI 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,\u201d Ms. Wallace told Rolling Stone<\/a>. \u201cBecause I liked him. I didn\u2019t want to believe all the awful things, but I\u2019m so ashamed and embarrassed.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n