Thug Life Army

The shots fired Monday at the Hot 97 studios were triggered by a simmering feud between gangster rapper 50 Cent and his turncoat protégé, rap artist The Game, and cops are bracing for more bullets.

The Monday night gunplay on Hudson St. wounded a member of The Game's posse, Kevin Reed, 20, who grew up with the rapper Game on the scarred streets of Compton, Calif.

Although hip-hop rap artist 50 Cent was on the air when the shots were fired, The Game's camp blamed him yesterday for the bloodshed.

"Security shot my li''l homie; I''m holdin'' 50 Cent responsible," The Game's brother, Big Fase, wrote on the rapper's Web site.

Not long after the Hot 97 shooting, the facade of the W.25th St. building that houses Violator Management, which counts 50 Cent as a client, was sprayed with 10 bullets.

Fears of payback were running high, and even 50 Cent was lying low. He bowed out of an event hosted last night by BET at Roseland near Times Square, where extra cops were posted.

The latest beef to rock the hip-hop world imploded in back-to-back radio interviews with 50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, and The Game, an ex-gangbanger named Jayceon Taylor.

50 Cent was the executive producer and performed on The Game's much-hyped first album, "The Documentary," which debuted at No. 1, and until recently The Game belonged to 50 Cent's G-Unit crew. But relations between the two - both former dope pushers who boast about their gunshot scars - have chilled.

In a Hot 97 interview Saturday night, The Game threw fuel on the fire by speaking kindly of fellow artists Nas and Jadakiss, who are bitter foes of 50 Cent.

When he returned to the radio station Monday, The Game refrained from bad-mouthing 50Cent. But when his 28-year-old mentor took to the airwaves to promote his new album, "The Massacre," he lashed out.

50 Cent told Hot 97 DJ Funkmaster Flex that The Game wasgetting too big for his baggy britches and said he had banished the 25-year-old from the G-Unit for disloyalty.

"The first three records he put out, I''m on them," exclaimed 50 Cent, whose song "Candy Shop" is the nation's No. 1 single. "Every record he's selling is based on me being on his record with him."

The Game and his entourage had already left the building, but when they heard 50 Cent's trash talk, they sped back.

"They tried to get on the air to dispute what 50 Cent was saying," a police source said.

Some of 50 Cent's faction confronted The Game's posse just outside, where shots rang out about 10 p.m.

Reed was hit in the buttocks and left bleeding on the snow-covered street while everyone else scattered - and 50 Cent cut his interview short, cops said.

Reed was treated at St. Vincent's Medical Center and was reluctantly speaking to detectives at the 6th Precinct stationhouse last night.

Police found at least four shell casings at the scene, but it was unclear how many shots were fired, how many gunmen were involved and who shot Reed.

Cops were checking Hot 97's pricey surveillance system - which provided crucial evidence in the probe of a 2001 gunfight between Lil'' Kim's and Capone-N-Noreaga's crews.

NYPD detectives also were working with Los Angeles police to see if a shooting in California last week, involving a car owned by The Game, was linked.

Hip-hop rap artist Fabolous, who was at the BET event, said the two camps need to make peace.

"It's an in-house thing," Fabolous said. "Those people definitely have the same business partners. The people at the top can step in and get this thing resolved."

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