Gloria Velez is launching a podcast, and she named it after the exact comment that set her off. The Gloria Velez podcast is called General Population Podcast, a direct shot at the It Is What It Is segment where Cam’ron, Mase and Treasure “Stat Baby” Wilson suggested the video vixens of her era simply went back to “general population.”
She did not disappear. She did not go quietly. She started a show and named it after the insult.
Velez made the announcement on Instagram and X. “ATTENTION, GENERAL POPULATION!” she wrote. “For once, EVERYBODY is invited!” She promised new voices, real conversations and different perspectives, with “no VIP section, no special treatment, and definitely no sugarcoating.” She even put a trademark symbol on the name.
There is no premiere date or guest list yet. Velez told followers the conversations are about to get interesting, that everybody has a story, and that “the gates are officially opening soon.” The Gloria Velez podcast already has its own Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and X accounts set up under General Population Podcast handles.
The name is the whole point. On a recent episode of It Is What It Is, Wilson asked what happened to most of the video vixens from back in the day. The answer on the show was that they “just go back to general population,” and the cohosts agreed it was a good way to put it.
Velez, whose credits include Jay Z and UGK’s “Big Pimpin'” and Ja Rule’s “Holla Holla,” did not take it as a compliment. “What exactly is wrong with general population?” she asked in a video response. “We were never aliens, inmates, or some separate species. We were women working in entertainment. Then we grew up.” She said the women from that era became mothers, wives, business owners, authors, artists and caregivers, and pointed out that decades later, hip hop is still talking about them. “So yes, sweetheart, we are among the general population,” she said, “and apparently still important enough to stay in your conversation.”
Then she went further. Velez asked what would happen if women from that era started podcasts and livestreams where all they did was dissect men’s lives instead of their music or their businesses. She spelled out what those episodes would sound like: who was broke before the fame, who was faking money, who was cheating, who was using drugs and who mistreated women. When men spend hours picking apart women’s bodies, relationships and pasts, she said, it gets packaged as content.
Fans responded by telling her to start the podcast already and spill the tea. Now the Gloria Velez podcast is real, and she has not said whether she plans to open that vault.
The back and forth got uglier before the announcement. Cam’ron reportedly suggested online that the public had forgotten about Velez and teased having a “file” on her past. On the show, he played a montage about her alleged history, including her relationship with R&B singer Aaron Hall, which began when she was reportedly a teenager. Velez and Hall share a son, and Velez has spoken publicly about the abuse she says she endured in that relationship, including in her memoir “Silent Screams.”
Mase took a different route. On the Oct. 5 episode, he called Velez an OG of music videos and pressed Wilson on what she really meant. “So you’re saying they went backwards,” he said. Wilson answered that she did not see it as a diss. Velez gave Mase his flowers on X the next day. “He could’ve easily joined the pile on, but instead he actually stepped back, listened and acknowledged what was being said,” she wrote.
