Rapper Jay-Z [ tickets ] pled guilty on Wednesday (10/17) to stabbing a record-label executive in 1999, according to published reports. He will likely be sentenced to three years probation.

In December 1999, Jay-Z--whose real name is Shawn Carter--was accused of stabbing Untertainment Records head Lance "Un" Rivera at a CD release party in New York City. He pleaded "not guilty" in February 2000 to first-degree attempted assault and second-degree assault charges stemming from the incident, felonies for which he could have been sentenced to 15 and 7 years in jail, respectively.

Those charges were eventually reduced to a single count of third-degree assault, to which Carter pled guilty in Manhattan's State Supreme Court on Wednesday.

According to an Associated Press report, Carter "mumbled" to the court, "I stabbed Lance Rivera,'' when entering his guilty plea. A judge is expected to sentence him on Dec. 6 to three years probation.

The 1999 stabbing reportedly occurred after Carter approached Rivera in a New York City nightclub, accused him of distributing counterfeit copies of one of his recordings and pulled a five-inch knife that he stabbed Rivera with at least twice.

Rivera had planned to sue Carter over the incident, but ultimately settled out of court for between $500,000 and $1 million, and later told prosecutors he was not interested in pursuing the case, AP reported.

Carter's guilty plea came one day after a gun-possession charge pending against him was dismissed, according to AP. That charge stemmed from an April incident in which police found a gun in a car that Carter and three other men were riding in. Carter's chauffeur reportedly claimed the gun as his own on Tuesday (10/16), and was sentenced to one year in prison.

"The Blueprint," Carter's latest album, was released on his own Roc-A-Fella record label early last month and spent its first three weeks in the No. 1 slot on the Billboard 200 album chart. He finished a series of concert dates behind the album on Saturday (10/13).