If Entertainment Weekly really wants to be "the most comprehensive guide" to popular culture out there, it might consider enrolling executive editor Lori Majewski in a remedial course on hip-hop hagiography.

Majewski, who was hired at EW last September after previous gigs at Us Weekly and Teen People, committed a cringe-inducing gaffe at a private advance listening session for 50 Cent's forthcoming record two weeks ago, insiders say. The rapper was present, and at one point he told Majewski of the formative role that Run DMC cofounder and hip-hop legend Jam Master Jay, aka Jason Mizell, played in his career. To which Majewski responded, "Do you still talk to him?"

If so, it would be one spectacular conversation, seeing as how Mizell was famously gunned down in his Queens studio in 2002, as readers of EW's In Memoriam 2002 issue will recall.

According to a source familiar with the conversation, Fiddy answered Majewski's question by standing up and walking out of the room without saying another word.

Yvette Gayle, a rep for 50 Cent who was present at the meeting, confirms that Majewski asked the question, but insists that Majewski had simply been confused by 50 Cent's lengthy and complicated recounting of his business history with Mizell and his label, JMJ Records. "I don't think that she knew they were specifically talking about Jam Master Jay," Gayle says. "She wasn't really coherent about who 50 Cent was talking about." And Gayle denies that 50 Cent walked as soon as he realized that he had been speaking to an irretrievably white girl who lives in New Jersey and doesn't know the first thing about hip-hop. "He answered that Jam Master Jay had passed, and they finished their conversation for another 20 minutes," Gayle says.

Majewski did not respond to an e-mail, and a rep for EW did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Photo: Getty Images