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"We about to start an epidemic with this one," Jermaine Dupri announces at the beginning of Nelly's 2005 music video for "Grillz," the St. Louis rapper's anthem in honor of gold- and diamond-studded teeth. Nelly's impact and relevance might have faded over the past decade, but this Billboard Hot 100–topping hit was prophetic. The video, which featured more than 70 close-up grill shots, introduced mainstream America to lavish dental ornamentation. It captured the moment when bejeweled dental prostheses entered the American zeitgeist. It was an era when Johnny Dang, the Vietnamese-born, Houston-based jeweler to the stars who made a cameo in "Grillz," was selling more than 400 decorative teeth coverings a day for at least $500 a pop.
Nine years and a Great Recession have passed since "Grillz" first hit the airwaves, but Americans of all socioeconomic situations are still flashing expensive mouth jewelry. Of course, MCs like A$AP Rocky and the Flatbush Zombies have carried on the tradition of wearing and rapping about gold teeth. But grills have also maneuvered their way over to the pop charts. In the past few years we've seen them adorn the teeth of Katy Perry, Madonna, Miley Cyrus, and Beyoncé. The accessory has even appeared on the runways of New York and Paris Fashion Week and in the pages of Vogue.
Yet, as ever-present as grills may seem today, mouth bling isn't new. And it wasn't new when Nelly started "an epidemic," either. Actually, grills have been appearing, disappearing, and reappearing throughout human history in fits and spurts as civilizations have risen and fallen around the world. Tracing their story reveals threads of ancient misogyny, class warfare, and lost scientific studies and artifacts." (Vice https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/znw9z4/the-ancient-history-of-grills-456)
