The images are chiseled in lyric and video: the bravado, the swagger, the tattooed masculinity -- seemingly unassailable, the definition of the modern hip-hop thug. It's a persona embraced by everyone from Eminem to P. Diddy, and just about any artist who storms onto Billboard's album charts in a hail of hard-boiled raps.

It's a good question to ask in the wake of the latest rap rumble, in which D12 -- minus its leader, Eminem -- allegedly laid a whupping on fellow Detroit rappers Esham and T.N.T. of the group Natas.

Police in Camden, N.J., haven't filed charges in the incident, which both sides acknowledge took place backstage Friday during the Warped Tour stop in that city. But both acts were kicked off the tour, which plays Pontiac on Sunday, and the assaulted rappers are back home nursing wounds that include Esham's broken nose and ruptured eyeball.

It's unclear who started Friday's fight, but there's no dispute the momentum had been building for months, as Esham and Eminem traded insults via song and the Web. As happens with these sorts of things, just why they'd been mouthing off was murky -- something involving pride and who stole whose creative style.

Eminem has been in a similar verbal volley with Detroit's Insane Clown Posse, with some withering invective delivered in song by both sides. That too has manifested itself violently: ICP's road manager pleaded guilty last week to charges stemming from a May incident in which he allegedly choked a man who waved an Eminem T-shirt. Eminem is on probation after pulling a gun on an ICP associate in Royal Oak last summer.

In all cases, somebody was mad because somebody else had said something. Yep, you can chalk it all up to words -- the very lifeblood of rap. Words, whose most twisted applications are passionately defended by the likes of Eminem when it comes to the music.

But here's where words took us last weekend: two musical acts, one with a No. 1 album, the other with a cherished spot on a big summer tour, trading blows like schoolkids on the playground. The difference, of course, is that you understand when an 8-year-old wells up with tears and shoves somebody after an insult. It's difficult to understand when grown men are so easily provoked.

Especially grown men who thrive on virile images of masculinity. But such is the way in hip-hop culture, where the thugs are apparently so vulnerable they can be emasculated by words. The hypersensitivity to being "disrespected" has led to beatings of record company execs, critics and plenty of fellow rappers.

Now, there are real ways to disrespect someone: You sleep with his wife. You steal his money. You vandalize his home.

But saying something? Sure, you can slander a person by telling lies, which is why there are laws against it. But criticism, insults, offensive remarks -- they're the pesky but inevitable detritus of free discourse.

Steve Nawojczyk, an expert on gang culture, has pinpointed the contemporary three R's: reputation, respect and retaliation. They're the tense dynamic of street life -- and, increasingly, the world of rap.

"It's all interrelated," he says from his Little Rock, Ark., office. "It doesn't matter if it's Crips and Bloods or guys behind microphones. What's strange is that those guys who seemingly have the world in their pockets, who have access to anything they want, would jeopardize it."

You start to suspect that the real upshot of the Eminem-Esham conflict -- of all these insipid hip-hop rivalries -- is less about someone being disrespectful than about someone else deciding to feel disrespected.

Contact BRIAN McCOLLUM at 313-223-4450 or mccollum@freepress.com.