Cops are investigating whether an ex-con from Brooklyn – who is romantically linked to hip hop queen Lil’ Kim – shot at rap star 50 Cent last month, the Daily News has learned.

Ex-con Damion (World) Hardy, 28, who grew up in the Lafayette Gardens Houses in Bedford-Stuyvesant, is a subject of the probe into who fired at 50Cent and his entourage outside the DoubleTree Hotel in Jersey City, sources said. No one was hit.

Jersey City police have been showing Hardy’s mug shot to witnesses, law enforcement sources said. Hardy, who is staying with Lil’ Kim at her Bergen County estate, has not been questioned in the case, sources said.

In 1999, while Hardy was serving time for shooting at narcotics cops in Brooklyn and tampering with a witness, his brother, Myron (Wise) Hardy, was slain.

Jersey City Police Capt. Peter Nalbach said yesterday that 50 Cent, whose real name is Curtis Jackson, has not been questioned in connection with the Sept. 10 shooting in Jersey City. A subpoena issued in his name is good only in New Jersey, Nalbach said.

The rapper recently bought Mike Tyson’s former estate in Farmington, Conn., and has been traveling overseas.

The gunfire broke out just blocks from where 50 Cent’s longtime rival, Murder Inc. rap star Ja Rule, was filming a movie. Ten bullet casings were found outside the hotel, seven from a .40-caliber handgun, three from a .45.

“We have some photographs, and we are trying to get people who were actually there to identify the people in the photographs,” Nalbach said. “We believe 50 Cent was present, and we still want to talk to him.”

Credit: NY Daily News