Voletta Wallace, Notorious B.I.G.’s Mother, Dies at 78

(variety.com) Voletta Wallace, the Notorious B.I.G.‘s mother who kept his legacy alive in the decades following his passing, has died.

Wallace was in hospice care at her residence in Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania, when she died of natural causes. The Monroe County Coroner’s Office confirmed her death in a statement to Variety. She was 78.

Born in Jamaica, Wallace was an integral figure in her son’s music, and the rapper (born Christopher Wallace) mentioned her in several of his songs, including his 1994 hit “Juicy” and “Things Done Changed.” She conceived her son with a Jamaican welder and politician named Selwyn George Latore, who left the family when Biggie was around two years old. She raised him as a single mother and worked as a preschool teacher, keeping a close eye on him at the brownstone where they lived in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.