Remember Voletta Wallace, mother of rapper Biggie Smalls

Voletta Wallace passed away this week at the age of 78. Her one son is the late Christopher Wallace, aka hip-hop artist Biggie Smalls, and the infamous Big seems fitting that she left this world on the month of Black History.

Following an event attended at the Petersen Automobile Museum in Los Angeles, a gunman fatally shot a big sie in a 1997 drive-by shooter. He was 24 years old.

I interviewed Voletta several times over the phone about her son for a biography, Murder of Biggie Smalls. When I traveled to New York City to study books, Voletta invited me to join Teenage in New Jersey.

Voletta worked as an alternative teacher and raised her son as a single parent on the Brooklyn walk-up. She tried so hard, she told me, keeping him off the streets and leaving the gang in their tough Bedford Stuyvesant borough.

When Biggie was 10 years old, his school celebrated Father’s Day to explain the relationship between his children and his father. Biggie instead spoke about his mother, as his father is lacking in his life.

“I remember what he told me, ‘Ma, what their father did for them is what you did for me.”

She tried to instill a strong work ethic in her son. By the age of 11, Biggie had bagged groceries at Met Foods, a corner market for Fulton and St. James, at Met Foods, just a block and a half down the street from his walk-up.

As TeenagerBiggie took him to the street corners not as a thug but as an aspiring rapper.

Most of the kids in Biggie’s neighborhood were rapped. It was a hallmark of life on the streets of Black Americans, with children smacking various rhymes and story combinations. Biggie was the product of that life in the 1980s food.

Biggie’s street time was rewarded after signing a music deal with Bad Boy Records. Voletta could not have been proud.

Years after his death, Voletta filed illegal death lawsuits against the city of Los Angeles and the Los Angeles Police Department. The judge later dismissed it. Voletta sued

She said she wanted justice for her son.

Unlike the late mother of rapper Tupac, Afeni Shakur was more about Tupac’s music and poetry than his death. Tupac Shakur was shot in Las Vegas in September 1996 six months before Biggie. In an interview, Shay told me that even if Tupac’s murder was resolved, he wouldn’t get his son back. To live out his legacy was a gift Afeni gave him after his death.

Meanwhile, Voletta felt strongly about bringing the murderer to justice and putting her energy in order to keep him. Memory I live through activities and advocacy. She founded the Christopher Wallace Memorial Foundation for Community Empowerment through the Arts; education. Before his death, Voletta was involved in Biggie’s music Career;She often joined him on stage when he made presentations in the music industry.

He felt he was home there to film a music video with Bad Boy Records producer Sean “Diddy” Combs in the last month of Biggie’s life.

“Yes, Christopher was comfortable in Los Angeles,” Voletta admitted during a phone conversation after his son’s death. “Maybe he was Too much comfortable. “

His death broke his mother’s heart. Fighting for justice, Voletta helped her overcome her grief, Voletta said. She felt that she owed him. She couldn’t say it well, she said well. Biggie was at the heart of her life. As Voletta told me, “He was my baby, my Chrissy Pooh.”