LOVE TRIANGLE: A shirtless Chris Brown parties at club W.i.P. early yesterday shortly before he and his entourage mixed it up with Drake and his posse.
An attorney for Chris Brown said Drake started the brawl that turned a SoHo nightclub into a blood-soaked battlefield – and said he has given police evidence that backs up his claim.
“I have turned over evidence that it was Drake who instigated this. The evidence makes it clear that Chris is the victim in all of this,” said Brown’s attorney, Mark Geragos.
“My client was the victim of a cowardly attack. What sort of people throw bottles and glass?” Geragos added.
The hotheaded hip-hop stars — and their entourages — fought with fists and bottles yesterday over the affections of Rihanna, sources and witnesses said.
“I am f–king the love of your life,” read a note sent from Drake’s table to Brown at about 4 a.m. after Brown ordered his rival’s table a bottle of pricey Armand de Brignac Champagne — commonly known as Ace of Spades, a witness said.
Rihanna — Brown’s singer ex-girlfriend who had also been linked to Drake — was not at the W.i.P. club, where Brown was buying bottles for several tables in the VIP section.
“I saw him tell the waitress to send a bottle to Drake’s table. I then saw a waitress come back with a piece of paper and gave it to Chris,” Ingrid Gutierrez, 21, a model who was sitting at Brown’s table, told The Post.
“He looked upset and just threw it on the floor.”
Drake and a posse that included rapper Meek Mill and all their bodyguards then walked over to the table where a shirtless Brown was seated.
“They were giving him [Brown] the middle finger. They got into each other’s faces and were shouting at each other,” Gutierrez said.
“Chris told Drake to f–k off, and the next thing I could hear is the sound smashed glass and mayhem started.
“Somebody in Drake’s group — I don’t think it was Drake — swung at Chris, but missed.
“Chris didn’t swing back, he just tried to brush them off. He told us, ‘Let’s go,’ but there were bottles flying at us. I saw one bottle was thrown, it looked like a vodka bottle, and hit Chris on the face,” she said.
“The anger from Drake’s entourage was terrifying.”
The bloodshed touched off a full-scale brawl in the basement club — where at least five bystanders were injured by flying bottles .
Brown’s bodyguard, Big Pat, suffered a gaping head wound.
W.i.P., connected to the much-larger Greenhouse club, was jammed at the time with a slew of celebrities — including Mary J. Blige, Trey Songz, Wale, Ne-Yo and NBA star Tony Parker — and their hangers-on.
Brown, 23 — on probation for assaulting Rihanna three years ago — suffered a deep gash on his face.
“There was blood gushing out of Chris’ chin,” Gutierrez said.
Brown later tweeted a photo of his wound with the taunt, “How u party with rich n—- that hate? Lol….Throwing bottles like girls? #shameonya!”
Gutierrez was also injured in the fight.
“I was on the couch, covering my face, because I’d been hit on the head by a bottle and my head was bleeding,” the Brooklyn woman said.“I thought I was going to die.”
W.i.P.’s floor was left a wasteland of broken glass, spilled booze and blood after the capacity crowd emptied out onto Van Dam and Varick streets.
Once outside, Brown took off his shirt again and stood at a waiting SUV as a member of his entourage cursed and pointed to someone in the crowd, an amateur video posted on YouTube shows.
“Where’s the gun? . . . Get in the f–kin’ truck!” another entourage member seems to be saying.
“Right here, right here,” someone replies.
Brown spokesman Jeff Raymond calls the video misleading.
“It is not true,” he said. “There was no gun.”
NYPD detectives yesterday took copies of surveillance video that captured the brawl. There were at least two police reports filed as cops investigated.
Rihanna has been in New York for the past several days. Last night she was spotted at Jay-Z’s 40/40 Club.
Drake, 25, who has hooked up with the 24-year-old songstress, was in upstate Saratoga Springs for a concert last night.
He didn’t directly address the fight, but he told the crowd: “I woke up this morning and the only thing that was on my mind was the fact that we had a [expletive] show in Saratoga tonight.”
Sources said he walked into the W.i.P club with his crew at about 2:45 a.m. when Brown was already partying hard with another gal pal, model Karreuche Tran.
“Everybody was having a good time dancing,” recalled Gutierrez, a Fordham University student.
“I was drunk, Chris was drunk, we were all drunk. We were about to leave the club and go to an after-party at Chris’ hotel room,” she said.
Brown’s rep, Raymond, said, “Chris, Karreuche and his friends were victims of a brutal attack last night at W.i.P. They sustained several injuries. Chris and his party are cooperating with New York authorities, who are pursuing the incident further.”
The Canadian-born Drake — whose real name is Aubrey Drake Graham — has declined to speak with police but plans to talk to them in the company of his attorney at a later date, said NYPD spokesman Paul Browne.
Drake’s spokeswoman, Kelly Bush, insisted, “Drake did not participate in any wrongdoing of any kind last night at W.i.P. He was on his way out of the club when the altercation began.
Gutierrez plans to sue the club and the bottle thrower, who has yet to be identified.
“The club W.i.P. failed in its duty to protect its patrons and my client, Miss Gutierrez,” said her lawyer, Sal Strazzullo. “We will study the tapes of the incident to identify the person that threw the bottle that hit her.”
Additional reporting by Tara Palmeri, Jamie Schram, Larry Celona and Georgett Roberts