Murder. Chicago.

A gorgeous, historic lakeside city known for its world-class attractions, cultural influence and brilliant exports -- from deep-dish pizza and the world champion Cubbies to Chance the Rapper and Barack Obama -- Chicago should be known for other things.

Too often, that's not the case. Yet while Chicago's violence is real and, at times, startling, there are many cities with more disturbing body counts.

Over and over, we hear it. It's a premise of Ice Cube's "Barbershop: The Next Cut" and Spike Lee's "Chiraq." Hometown son Kanye West, one of many Chi-town rappers to lament the city's violence, has rhymed, "I'm from the murder capital where they murder for capital."

News outlets have handed Chicago unsavory titles like "America's mass shooting capital," and when the city recently went more than six days without a shooting death, local reporters felt it warranted a headline . Plenty of people were shot, mind you, just none fatally.

Even President Donald Trump has homed in on the violence whipping through the Windy City.

Chicago murder rate is record setting - 4,331 shooting victims with 762 murders in 2016. If Mayor can't do it he must ask for Federal help! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 2, 2017

If Chicago doesn't fix the horrible "carnage" going on, 228 shootings in 2017 with 42 killings (up 24% from 2016), I will send in the Feds! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) January 25, 2017

Seven people shot and killed yesterday in Chicago. What is going on there - totally out of control. Chicago needs help! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 24, 2017

Statistics don't lie, but...

It's a product purely of numbers. Official FBI data from the latest year available says that Chicago had 478 murders in 2015. That's tops in the country.

The 2016 tally maintained by the Chicago Tribune suggests the city is in no danger of losing this dubious distinction. The newspaper counted 785 murders in 2016 , a spike of more than 64 percent.

Murder rates for midsized cities, 2015 Birmingham, Ala. -- 37.2 Jackson, Miss. -- 31.1 Baton Rouge, La. -- 26.2 Hartford, Conn. -- 25.7 Salinas, Calif. -- 25.3 West Palm Beach, Fla. -- 21 San Bernardino, Calif. -- 20.3 Richmond, Va. -- 19.5 Kansas City, Kan. -- 18.6 Dayton, Ohio -- 18.5 Source: FBI

On their face, the numbers are enough to make folks cancel their vacations or business trips to the nation's third largest city, but a deeper dive into the numbers shows fears over the city's violence can be overblown when compared to cities much smaller.

Atlanta, Washington, Oakland, California, Memphis, Tennessee, and Kansas City, Missouri, for instance, all have higher violent crime rates. There are also numerous cities, including St. Louis and Detroit, with much higher rates of non-fatal shootings, according to the Major Cities Chiefs Association

As for homicide alone, Chicago has a murder rate more than quadruple the nation's largest city, New York, and more than double the second largest, Los Angeles.

But there are 13 large cities -- population 250,000 or more -- with higher murder rates (murders per 100,000 people), and that doesn't include a host of midsized cities with more murders per 100,000 residents.

Here's a look at the top 5 major cities when it comes to murder rates, according to the 2015 FBI numbers

St. Louis

Population: 317,095 Murders: 188 Murder rate: 59.3 Violent crime rate: 1,817.1

JUST WATCHED Police chief weighs in on 2015 murder spike. Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH Police chief weighs in on 2015 murder spike. 03:01

The Gateway to the West earned another nickname in 2015, murder capital. Raw numbers put St. Louis well behind Chicago's 478 murders, but Chicago's population is more than eight times that of St. Louis. In 2015, Metropolitan Police Department Chief Samuel Dotson blamed a 58% spike in murder on guns, the justice system and the tendency of young people to resort to violence in resolving disputes.

Baltimore

Population: 621,252 Murders: 344 Murder rate: 55.4 Violent crime rate: 1,535.9

JUST WATCHED May 2015 was Baltimore's deadliest month in 15 years. Replay More Videos ... MUST WATCH May 2015 was Baltimore's deadliest month in 15 years. 02:41

Baltimore is no stranger to crime, but 2015 was a remarkable year even by Charm City standards. Following the death of 25-year-old Freddie Gray , law enforcement officials reported that arrests plunged while murders surged. Like the Chicago Tribune, The Baltimore Sun keeps a running murder count, which shows, among other things, that the violence comes in waves. Consider this: There have been only 16 murders in the last 30 days, about one every other day, according to the site. But the last six months have hosted 165 homicides, almost one a day.

Detroit

Population: 673,225 Murders: 295 Murder rate: 43.8 Violent crime rate: 1,759.6

Detroit lands at No.3 in terms of 2015 murder rate.

The nation briefly turned its head to Detroit's murder problem during one of 2015's most sensational cases: a mother who was later convicted of torturing her two children, killing them and storing them in the freezer . But there were 293 other murders in the city that year. And while that may sound like a lot for a city with fewer than 700,000 people, the local news heralded it as the lowest body count since 1967 . Its highest came a few years later, in 1974, when there were 714 murders in the city.

New Orleans, Louisiana

Population: 393,447 Murders: 164 Murder rate: 41.7 Violent crime rate: 949.6

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Milwaukee

Population: 600,400 Murders: 145 Murder rate: 24.2 Violent crime rate: 1,596.1

Milwaukee, Wisconsin, edged out Washington D.C. for the fifth-worst murder rate.

Milwaukee's murder rate was especially troubling in 2015 because it represented a huge uptick from the 86 murders a year prior. It also represented only the second time since 2007 that the city had topped 100 murders. Like the newspapers in Chicago and Baltimore, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel keeps a running tab of homicides in the city . Faced with a spike of murders in 2015, Milwaukee residents told the paper they had trouble pinning down the reasons for the surge, aside from the usual suspects of poverty, unemployment, education, ineffective courts, policing and easy access to guns.

** Washington (24.1), Kansas City, Missouri (23), Cincinnati, Ohio (22.1), Memphis, Tennessee (20.5), Oakland, California (20.3), Atlanta (20.2), Pittsburgh (18.6) and Philadelphia (17.9) also beat Chicago's 2015 murder rate of 17.5.