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Jay-Z was arrested for

illegal gun possession near a Manhattan nightclub early Friday,

police said.

The rapper, whose

real name is Shawn Carter, was arrested with three other men

shortly after 3 a.m. when a loaded handgun was found in their

car, said a police spokeswoman, officer Cheryl Cox.

Undercover officers

say they saw a man armed with a gun getting into the 2001

Chevy Suburban outside Club Exit in the Hells Kitchen neighborhood

on the West Side. Cox did not know which man was carrying

the gun.

Police stopped

the car less than a block away and found the gun, and the

four passengers were charged with third-degree criminal possession

of a weapon, Cox said.

Along with Carter,

31, police arrested Hamzah Hewitt, 39, Romero Chambers, 43,

and Tyran Smith, 28. The four were scheduled to be arraigned

later Friday.

Friday’s arrest

was not Carter’s first run-in with law. He was indicted last

January for allegedly stabbing a record executive during a

nightclub brawl.

The rapper’s “Vol.

2 … Hard Knock Life” won the Grammy for best rap album

in 1999.

The arrest comes

less than a month after a jury acquitted rap mogul Sean “Puffy”

Combs and his bodyguard, Anthony “Wolf” Jones, of gun possession

and bribery charges from a Dec. 27, 1999, shooting inside

another Manhattan nightclub. Three people were injured.