Detroit Rap City

Detroit is really hyping up its rap side these days. 313, the area code for Detroit has become a buzzword in songs emanating from Detroit, a latter-day Compton.

I can't help but be proud that my parents live in the 313. My dad's tickled pink by all this, and hopefully he will have a picture for me to put up later of the new Faygo 313 billboard he just saw - a manifestation of the cool that Detroit has become.

The Faygo 313 billboard isn't the first one touting Detroit's rap cred. Immediately after Proof, one of the Detroit rap group D12's members, was shot and killed, a big billboard went up commemorating him.

I like this new side of Detroit. It's a brilliant marketing coup - playing up Detroit's crime and violence to tout its credibility as a rap city. Rap brings big money and Detroit certainly isn't sanitized enough yet to diminish its reputation of a murder capital.

I realize that I have to start going around and telling people that I'm from the 313. It is quite the amusing accident of area code zoning that Grosse Pointe is in the 313 - hardly any place could be more remote from the mental image conjured by the phrase "the 313." But nevertheless, it's undeniably in the 313.