Why Biggie Smalls hated his father: “Fuck that n*gga”
Biggie Smalls’ home life was far from perfect. He was born in Brooklyn to Voletta and Selwyn George, a Jamaican couple, but while he was just a toddler, his dad upped sticks, and Selwyn George abandoned Voletta to raise Biggie alone.
Voletta was a pre-school teacher, while Selwyn George has been described in different outlets as both a welder and a politician. Regardless of what his job precisely was, his additional income surely would have helped with the raising of Biggie. As it was, Voletta had to take on additional shifts at work to help get her son through his childhood.
From a very young age, Biggie fell into drug dealing. He was apparently dealing weed by the age of 12, and he eventually graduated towards selling harder stuff. “I used to sell crack,” he admitted during a conversation with The New York Times in 1994.
Big explained that his clients would literally visit his mother’s house to pick up their product. “My customers were ringing my bell, and they would come up on the steps and smoke right here,” he said, “They knew where I lived; they knew my moms.”
For her part, Voletta claimed during this same interview that she had been unaware of her son’s activities during this period. She said she only learned of his “little antics” when she listened to the content of his songs after he became a famous rapper.
It would be a stretch to confidently suggest that Biggie would never have become involved in drug-dealing had his family not broken up while he was a toddler, but his father’s abandonment can’t have helped. There are countless socioeconomic factors that can help explain how a young Black man in an urban area ends up getting involved in dealing, but growing up poor is surely one to consider.
Biggie’s dad leaving was certainly an important reason for his and his mother’s financial troubles while he was growing up, and it’s something he never forgave him for. Without his father providing for his family, a young Biggie was also starved of a positive role model.
Biggie, in response, turned to others who surrounded him, namely, drug dealers. To the young Big, these people, with their cash on display, were “fly as hell”, as he put it in a feature for Interview magazine. Those “hustlers on the corner” were the future rapper’s “role models”.
While Big had come to idolise the dealers in his area, he retained a hatred of his father. “Fuck that n*gga,” he remarked in the interview, “He jetted when I was two years old. Never heard from him since then”.