Gold Tooth Grin: A Brief History of Grills
Hip-hop and its many cultural touchstones have come a long way since its birth in the late seventies. The sounds and styles that hip-hop either invented or popularised are now so deeply ingrained in popular culture that they can hardly be defined outside of it. Hip-hop is pop and streetwear is luxury.
Even with all this mainstream acceptance, there are still aspects of ‘the culture’ that remain polarising. Dental jewellery – more commonly known as grills, or fronts –while popular, do not enjoy widespread acceptance outside of hip-hop circles.
To understand the position grills occupy in popular culture let's take a look at the origins and current state of dental adornments.
In New York, the cradle of hip-hop, the early eighties were a time of unmatched personal expression and creative output. The perfect environment for an enterprising jeweller named Eddie Plein. Eddie’s invention – sparked by his time spent in the dentist’s chair having his tooth replaced – was the now infamous fronts, a gold covering for teeth that could be removed at will (as opposed to a permanent crown fitting, or a gold tooth).
After months of trial and error, Eddie was finally able to unveil his creation to the many eager rappers who were emerging from the boroughs of Queens, Harlem and Brooklyn, keen to establish their own visual identity and set themselves apart from their peers.
Word of mouth quickly spread, and soon Eddie was catering not only to rappers, but pimps, gangsters and anyone who could afford a set of his custom creations.
Therein lies the problem at the heart of the popularity of grills. They are, for better or worse, absurd and ostentatious and they attract wearers who are themselves absurd and ostentatious. Some of whom looked like costume supervillains striding along sidewalks in broad daylight. Some of hip-hop’s most important founding fathers like Slick Rick and Flavor Flav made careers out of being characters – caricatures of a burgeoning art form that used every tool at their disposal to cement their image in the minds of anyone lucky enough to see them.
That is perhaps the reason that while piercings, tattoos and the like are increasingly unremarkable forms of expression, grills still remain the realm of the daring. Wearing a grill carries with it the pedigree of some of the most interesting trailblazers and attention seekers in the world.
Regardless of whether a particular set is made of silver, gold or platinum, inlaid with precious stones or set neat, a grill says a thousand words and undoubtedly leaves a lasting impression.
Words by Tshiamo Seape