History of Grillz: From Ancient Gold to Modern Bling

People wore grillz thousands of years before hip hop existed. The style didn't start in a music studio or a video. The gold teeth you see on artists today just continue an old history that traveled across different countries.

Jewelers use gold, silver, or platinum to make these removable covers for the front teeth. They often add diamonds. Rappers didn't invent this style, but they made it famous worldwide.

So, today we will go through the history of grillz and find out how it has upgraded to modern times. Let’s tell you, grillz are way older than you imagine.

Researchers near Giza, Egypt, found the oldest example from around 2500 BC. They discovered gold bands wrapped around teeth inside a burial site. The placement was deliberate and showed off high social status. But, modern researchers found this claim was not true at all.

Wealthy Etruscan women in ancient Italy wore gold wire bridges between 800 and 200 BC. Goldsmiths made these thick wires to hold loose teeth in place. Archaeologists have found about 20 examples. The owners didn't use them to fix dental issues. They used them to display wealth.

Etruscan women had more legal rights than Greek or Roman women of that era. They could own property and attend public banquets with their husbands. Their gold teeth reinforced that relative equality. Jean MacIntosh Turfa, co-author of The Golden Smile: The Etruscans and the History of Dentistry, explains it this way: these women were signaling that servants prepared their food and they could afford to eat only soft white bread. It was a status flex backed by real social standing.

When Rome conquered Etruria, the gold teeth disappeared with the culture. Roman poet Martial did not mourn the loss. He mocked women publicly for removing their teeth at night like they removed their silk dresses. To him, buying beauty was a sign of vanity worth ridiculing. Gold teeth would not reappear in European fashion for over a thousand years.

The Maya took a different approach in Central America. They drilled small holes into their teeth and packed them with jade, turquoise, and other stones. Only royalty and the rich did this. Jade meant a lot to the Maya, representing life and power.

Green specifically symbolized plant growth, agriculture, and sustenance. Wearing jade in the teeth was a public commitment. Royals were telling their people they were responsible for bringing rain, growing crops, and keeping everyone fed. It was not just decoration. It was a political promise embedded in the bone. 

One class below royalty, Mayan architects and sculptors could not afford jade. They modified their teeth by filing them instead. Even filed teeth looked significantly better than unmodified ones, according to Payson Sheets, an anthropology professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who studies ancient Mesoamerican societies.

The Spanish Conquest of the 1500s ended the practice entirely. As new rulers took power, jade grillz disappeared, the same way Roman conquest had erased Etruscan gold teeth centuries before.

In the Philippines, artifacts from around 1300 AD show gold bands across full rows of teeth. Completely different cultures across the world came up with this exact same idea on their own. Gold teeth meant power everywhere.

Ancient Filipino mythology explains the motivation. Melu, the creator of the world in Filipino tradition, was said to have pure gold teeth. Mortals followed his example. Some regions of the Philippines reportedly had over 100 words to describe gold. The Tagalog word ginto described gold as a metal. Pusal specifically described gold pegs set into teeth. Pasac referred to gold driven into or wrapped around them.

In Bolinao, in the Pangasinan province, people drilled up to nine separate holes in a single tooth to insert gold pegs shaped into delicate points or fish scale patterns. Further north, in Kabayan, full-row gold plates had their own name: chakang. They made speaking nearly impossible but were treated as family heirlooms. Leading women removed them to eat and replaced them for public appearances. Chakang passed through generations and was still worn during rituals as recently as the mid-20th century.

Spanish conquistadors called tooth decoration a barbarous practice and forced elite Filipinos to surrender their gold. Missionary Father Pedro de San Buenaventura made the threat explicit in 1613: 'Whoever files his teeth I will surely punish.' That single decree ended centuries of the Filipino gold tooth tradition.

Not every ancient culture used gold. Vikings across Scandinavia started filing ridges into their teeth around 900 AD.

Anthropologist Caroline Arcini of Sweden's National Heritage Board spent two decades studying this practice. She confirmed that tooth modification appeared across North America, South America, Africa, and Asia independently. It proved one universal truth: humans in every era and every culture shared the desire to change how their teeth looked.

Unlike the Etruscan women, Vikings who modified their teeth were almost exclusively men. And it was not about wealth. It was about group identity. Vikings carved a flat area on the tooth, then added ridges running downward from the top. They likely colored those ridges with a charcoal mixture, creating white teeth with dark black lines.

Most of these modified teeth came from Gotland, a transit island just southeast of Stockholm. It was a hub for Vikings traveling east, and archaeologists found foreign coins and jewelry buried there. Similar tooth filings also appeared in England, Denmark, Norway, and mainland Sweden.

Black communities in Southern America had limited access to dental care during the 19th and 20th centuries. Dentists used gold because it was the cheapest material to fill rotten teeth. This practical fix quickly turned into a status symbol. Having a gold tooth showed you had money, signaling survival and stability.

During the 1970s, West Indian immigrants from Jamaica and other Caribbean nations moved to Brooklyn and the Bronx. Hycide magazine editor Akintola Hanif remembers seeing neighbors in Bed-Stuy with gold teeth when he was a kid. Local New Yorkers soon copied the look, turning a medical need into a style choice.

The West Indies went through a slow economic period during the 1970s. Many people simply could not afford regular dental care, so gold was the practical solution. Reggae artist Shabba Ranks wore a gold tooth not as a fashion choice but because of limited dental access back home. 

West Indians who moved to New York sent money home for proper dental care but arrived in America with gold already fitted. New Yorkers called the style gold fronts back then. The word grillz came later, after the trend moved south.

Hip hop artists mixed immigrant traditions into the scene in the early 1980s. They couldn't build wealth through normal jobs, so they used gold chains and teeth to show off their money.

Atlanta built its own massive scene during the late 1980s. Raheem the Dream and Kilo Ali wore gold teeth constantly. The look exploded at Freaknik, the city's giant street party, where gold teeth became the ultimate sign of southern success and local pride.

Texas took over grill culture in the 1990s as Southern hip hop exploded. In Houston, a Vietnamese immigrant named Johnny Dang made luxury grillz without filing down the customer's real teeth. Normal shops ruined teeth with files back then, which was painful and permanent. Dang's safer method turned his shop into a destination for rappers and athletes across the country.

When Dang was growing up in Vietnam, the only people he saw with gold teeth were older generations. Gold teeth there were not fashionable. They were practical protection. 'The solid gold was to cover teeth, but not for fashion. It was to protect teeth,' Dang has explained. He carried that same precision craftsmanship to America and redirected it toward style.

Dang eventually partnered with Houston rapper Paul Wall. That connection led directly to the biggest pop culture moment in the history of mouth jewelry.

The same decade that saw Central Americans and Tajiks removing their gold teeth to look more Western was the exact same decade American hip hop made gold teeth aspirational. While immigrants were paying to replace gold with white, rappers were paying to replace white with gold.

After the Soviet Union collapsed, young Tajiks gained access to Western media and slowly began removing their gold. The desire to appear more Western drove the shift. People who attended international events reported feeling isolated because of their teeth. The very symbol that once signaled prosperity had become something the younger generation wanted erased.

The actual inventor of the removable grill was a Surinamese immigrant named Eddie Plein. He chipped a tooth in Suriname, where a local doctor wanted to put in a permanent gold cap. Plein refused the permanent cap but loved the idea of taking the gold in and out. He moved back to New York, attended dental school to learn how to shape crowns, and started crafting removable pieces in his basement.

Plein closed his shop in 2006, but his brother Lando kept using those same dental methods. By that time, the culture Plein started was way too big for one store.

Flavor Flav of Public Enemy bought several removable pieces from Eddie Plein and stacked them in his mouth to stand out. Slick Rick wore gold crowns with diamonds on his 1988 debut album cover, mixing his British art school background with Bronx street style. Big Daddy Kane and Kool G Rap adopted the look right after, making gold teeth the ultimate sign of success in the rap scene.

Regular kids immediately started pressing shiny foil gum wrappers over their teeth to copy the look. Jewelers across the country suddenly faced a massive wave of new orders. Grillz moved straight from rap subculture into mainstream fashion.

Johnny Dang opened a Houston jewelry shop in 1996 and started making grillz because customers kept asking for them. He met local rapper Paul Wall in 2002. At the time, standard jewelers painfully filed down a person's real teeth to fit the metal. Paul Wall wanted a jeweler who skipped that step, so the two teamed up.

Their partnership quickly turned Houston into the grill capital. Dang and Wall made custom pieces for major artists like Lil Jon, Ludacris, Gucci Mane, Kanye West, and Beyonce. Dang created special engraving methods and started shipping mail order mold kits so long distance customers could get a perfect fit. The business now employs around 75 people and sells grillz to jewelry stores in Japan, Italy, and across the United States.

Grillz did not fade away after 2005. They grew even bigger. Lil Wayne spent over 150,000 dollars on VVS diamond sets to treat his teeth like serious financial assets. Athletes, pop stars, and models quickly followed his lead.

In 2012, ASAP Rocky hired Parisian dental technician Dolly Cohen to design custom pieces. Cohen also created a gold grill shaped like an AK-47 for Rihanna. This work pushed the mouthpieces into high fashion circles.

By the early 2010s, the jewelry had moved from hip hop culture straight onto global runways. Madonna, Miley Cyrus, Katy Perry, and Olympic gold medalist Ryan Lochte all wore them in public. Beyonce collaborated with Cohen for a feature in Vogue, and grillz became a regular sight at New York and Paris Fashion Week.

Jewelers make modern grillz from many different materials now. Gold remains the main choice, and people can get it in 10k, 14k, or 24k. High-end buyers usually choose white gold, platinum, or sets covered in real diamonds.

Buyers who want a single gold tooth without the custom price tag can find options between 90 and 150 dollars per tooth from standard jewelers. The price range spans from a few hundred dollars to over twenty thousand. That spread is part of why grillz have stayed relevant across income levels for four decades.

Moissanite outshines natural diamonds for a fraction of the cost. The stone reflects more light and passes standard thermal testers, but it won't break the bank. Buyers get maximum shine without the diamond price tag. 

IceCartel sells modern grillz and fully iced sets for people who want to stand out.

For buyers who want something built specifically for their mouth, our custom grillz are fitted using your own dental mold, ensuring the kind of comfort and finish you cannot get off the shelf. Also, the moissanite grillz bring the full-ice look to anyone ready to wear something built for attention.

Got your first Grillz? Check out our Grillz Cleaning Guide right here!

The history of grillz is a story about status, identity, and culture moving across time. It started with Etruscan goldsmiths and Mayan jade, moved through slavery-era America, built itself into the fabric of hip-hop in New York and Atlanta, peaked commercially in 2005, and arrived at today's market, where fully custom grillz are both fashion statements and works of craft. 

The style remains popular worldwide. Strong grill communities thrive in the UK, Japan, and Guatemala. In these countries, specialty shops draw international clients who travel long distances just for a custom fitting.

A completely different part of the world shows the same pattern. Tajikistan, a landlocked country in Central Asia, was part of the Soviet Union, where dental care was free. Gold was the cheapest filling material available, so it became standard practice. Then it became a symbol of status. By the late Soviet era, gold teeth were visible in nearly every mouth in the capital, Dushanbe. In some cases, residents had replaced every single tooth with gold.

The Mayan tradition never actually died out in Central America. People across Guatemala and nearby countries still see gold teeth as a normal, respected look. The meaning simply shifted from royal jade to gold that shows off personal success.