Voletta Wallace, New York – The Jamaican-born and bred mother left the island nation searching for a better life at age 19 and landed in New York. An affair with a man she didn’t know was married led to the birth of her only son, another rap legend, Christopher “Notorious BIG” Wallace, aka Biggie Smalls. One of the greatest lyricists the rap genre has ever seen, Biggie made “ugly beautiful,” as Diddy once said, and held his vast audience spellbound with his acrobatic wordplay. Originally a close friend of Tupac, a misunderstanding birthed the so-called rap turf war of East and West. He was murdered in Los Angeles just six months after 2pac, allegedly in retaliation for Shakur’s murder.
