Scrilla, papes, ducats, dead presidents -- the terms for money in today's rap music are infinite, just as the Eskimos have hundreds of words for snow. The increasing focus on money suggests a shifting away from the dark, bleak messages of gangsta rap towards a new concern with making it, a new reason to hope you'll find a way into the larger society when everyone else labels you an outsider. Sandy Close is an editor of PNS; associate editor Henry Kumagai writes about pop culture.

News media accounts attempting to explain the dramatic decline in violent crime have singled out the new punitive climate as the primary cause -- everything from California's three-strikes law to New York's expanded police presence and crackdowns on misdemeanors like panhandling and spitting. "Policy makers have finally done something right!" boasted one headline in a major daily.

But what if some invisible calculus has also changed in young people's minds? What if the most violence-prone segment of the population is tiring of violence and finding something even more exhilarating?

A cursory sampling of rap music --probably the best gauge of where the energies of the youth culture are moving -- reveals that the violent lyrics that dominated the genre for years are giving way to a new vocabulary. Gats, 187s, drive-bys and beat downs -- slang for guns, homicides and slugfests -- are out. Papes, ducats and dead presidents -- all synonyms for money -- are in.

Like Eskimos who have hundreds of words for snow, hip-hop has countless words for money. Since rap's earliest years, money has been the driving force behind the industry, not to mention a powerful incentive for artists on the street. New York's Erik B and Rakim recorded their classic "Paid In Full" in 1987. Oakland's Too Short (or Too $hort, as it's often spelled) has always made money and a fast lifestyle a trademark.

But for today's rap artists, money isn't merely a theme. It's a fixation. Where once a stint behind bars marked a prestigious rite of passage, today it's "the come up" -- the rise to success -- that artists wear with pride. Those who have made it denounce their counterparts for displaying jealousy -- "playa hating".

On New York artist Nasir Jones' recent record "Nas is Coming," Los Angeles-based rapper-turned-producer Dr. Dre denounces the feud between East Coast and West Coast rappers. "Let's just get together and make some money, you know?" Nas voiced his approval in a long aside that resonates with many young people.

Part of the preoccupation with money is pragmatic. "I'll tell you what's on young people's minds," Krea Gomez, a 19-year-old hip hop aficionado with a 17-month-old baby, remarks. "Four-seventy-five (as in $4.75). We're beginning to confront the minimum wage and wonder how we're going to survive on it."

"There's money in rap and kids gravitate to it," agrees Herm Lewis, a San Francisco community activist who founded Black Power Records, a record label for inner city youth rappers. "They're not focusing on taking a purse, robbing a store, or doing anything illegitimate like that. They're more interested in going into the studio, listening to beats, getting on the microphone -- and getting paid."

But visions also attach to the dollar bill -- visions that may now be more potent than the politically conscious or Afrocentric motifs that once electrified the hip hop generation. The latest rap catch phrase -- "the mill ticket" -- offers a clue. Short for "million dollar ticket," the words imply admission or entry to a life of fortune.

In an era when politicians vie with each other to demonize one group after another -- illegal aliens, welfare cheats, incorrigible felons -- money turns out to be the great equalizer. Hold a dollar bill in your hand and you can gain admission anywhere, no matter what your race, ethnicity, class or gender. And if there's one thing the new generation craves right now, it's to be an insider.

Not so long ago death was the great direction-giver in rap music. Brandishing a gun marked you as the outsider you were and would always be. "Now the message has changed," says Joe Marshall, director of the nationally syndicated radio show Street Soldiers, where street youth converse with one another over the air waves. "It used to be that the dude from one neighborhood saw the dude from across town as the enemy. Today, no one buys that. The dude is just another bro."

Damon Pierson, 26-year-old founder of Dee Bess records in San Francisco, agrees. " I believed in the realism of gangsta rap," he says. "If you live that life style and those things happened to you -- I feel you when you rap about it."

"But hip hop culture is forever changing and gangsta rap has begun to fade," Person says. The reason, he thinks, is that "gangsta rap lacks a vision of hope. People want to believe things don't always have to be that way. We don't always have to be hanging out on street corners, selling drugs, shooting each other. It don't always have to be like this."