Gold Tooth Grill - Tooth Grill News
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January 31, 2006
Grills Gone Wild
By J. FREEDOM DU LAC THE WASHINGTON POST
So this is what they mean by “flossin’.”
Paul Wall has mastered the art of conspicuous consumption, and his
favored medium is his mouth. Thus, if the Houston rapper has pearly
whites, we wouldn’t know: Wall never appears in public without wearing a
grill — a removable cosmetic mouthpiece made of gold or platinum with
diamond inlays.
Wall is flashing one such designer dental piece, also known as a front,
on the cover of his 2005 album, “The Peoples Champ,” which is loaded
with references to bejeweled bicuspids (“Say cheese and show my fronts /
It’s more carats than Bugs Bunny’s lunch”).
His jewelry box of a mouth is also open for public viewing in the video
for Nelly’s smash hit “Grillz,” an ode to oral ostentation in which Wall
notes in a cameo: “I got my mouth lookin’ something like a disco ball/ .
. . I got the diamonds and the ice all hand-set/ I might cause a cold
front if I take a deep breath.”
He adds: “I put my money where my mouth is.”
Whereas recording stars used to celebrate their hits by putting gold and
platinum albums on their walls, they’re now putting the precious
materials directly over their teeth in the form of custom-fitted jewelry
that can be taken on and off like dentures.
Very expensive dentures: Although grills can be had for as little as $40
for a single gold tooth, the more elaborate, diamond-encrusted pieces
favored by the likes of Lil Jon, Snoop Dogg, Slim Thug, David Banner and
the Ying Yang Twins tend to cost $10,000 or more.
Still, the hoi polloi are following the lead of the hip-hop elite,
purchasing fronts in increasing numbers from dentists, shopping-mall
jewelers, even Web sites.
“It’s a fad gone wild,” says Eddie Plein, owner of Eddie’s Gold Teeth in
Atlanta. “It’s the big thing now in the rap community.”
If the eyes are the window to the soul, then in hip-hop culture — and
particularly in rap’s dominant Southern division — the mouth is the
display case to the vault. (It’s also occasionally a message board: Some
of the fanciest grills include tiny lettering that spells out album
titles, neighborhoods, nicknames.)
“It’s just like wearing a big gold chain around your neck; it’s a
celebration of success and excess,” says Elliott Wilson, editor in chief
of XXL, a rap magazine whose pages feature photos of artists showing off
their fronts and advertising for companies selling custom grills. And
there are plenty of them, with names like Gold Teeth America, Gold
Teeth.com, Gold Tooth Masters and Mr Bling.
“Having gold and diamonds in your mouth is the most audacious statement
you could make,” Wilson says. “It’s an inyour-face way of saying: We’re
hip-hop.”
And nobody says it quite like Paul Wall, who isn’t just a fan of fronts
but a leading source for them.
His Houston store, TV Jewelry, has a celebrity customer list that
includes Diddy, Usher, Cam’ron, Bow Wow and pretty much any Houston rap
artist of import.
It’s no idle boast, then, when Wall raps: “Call me George Foreman cuz’
I’m sellin’ everybody grills.” (And yes, you can actually understand
what he’s saying, even though fronts apparently aren’t conducive to
verbal communication.
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Houston rapper Bun B told the Los Angeles Times that a grill makes it
“real hard to talk; it builds up saliva.”)
Wall started TV Jewelry several years ago with Houston jeweler Johnny
Dang to supplement his income as an underground rapper and to make
connections that might help his career.
The grill gambit paid off, with TV Jewelry doing booming business and
Wall becoming a celebrity himself: “The Peoples Champ” topped the
Billboard chart, and multiple TV Jewelry customers — including Kanye
West and Nelly — have invited Wall to appear on their albums.
“Nelly knows that if he’s going to make a record about grills, he has to
get Paul Wall on it, because he’s the go-to guy for other rappers,”
XXL’s Wilson says.
“But Nelly was smart enough to realize that nobody had made a song
dedicated to this growing phenomenon. They effectively captured it.”
The grills trend began taking shape in rap circles in the 1980s in New
York. Eddie’s Gold Teeth owner Plein outfitted Flava Flav, a fronts
pioneer, with a set of simple gold caps, and other top New York rappers
followed, including Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap. In the early 1990s,
Plein moved to Atlanta and began designing flashier fronts for artists
including OutKast, Goodie Mob, Ludacris and Lil Jon.
As with most things hip-hop, bigger means better. So the grills became
more elaborate and expensive, with the idea being that laughing through
thousand-dollar teeth is a fine way to celebrate success, particularly
if you’ve come from a place of poverty.
“Everybody’s infatuated with them right now,” Plein says.
That’s fine for Hollywood. Not so much where dentists are concerned. And
they are concerned.
Matthew Messina, consumer adviser for the American Dental Association,
says bacteria tend to get trapped under a grill, which can result in
cavities, gum disease and even bone loss.
“The longer it’s in place, the more the risk escalates,” Messina says.
“If you put it on for a couple hours a day once a week, you’re probably
not going to have longterm effects. But I’ve heard of people who keep
them in all the time, except when they’re sleeping. That’s bad.”
Messina insists he’s not against the aesthetics of grills.
“It’s not what looks good or what looks bad or whatever,” he says.
“They’re just cleaning nightmares.”
Just something to chew on.