<\/p>\n
What would rap be without iced-out grills?<\/p>\n
New York City jeweler Eddie Plein is often credited with inventing the gold grill<\/a> as we know it back in the \u201980s. His early handiwork was most notably sported by Bronx rapper Just-Ice on the album cover<\/a> of his sophomore project Kool & Deadly released in 1987. Plein then took his Eddie\u2019s Famous Gold Teeth operation south to Virginia, then finally settling in Atlanta, where the gold grill has become a Southern staple. During the early 2000s, Paul Wall<\/a> and his business partner Johnny Dang picked up where Famous Eddie left off and took the gold grill to another level, with the duo still being the go-to jewelers for custom grills nearly two decades later.<\/p>\n More from Billboard<\/strong><\/p>\n Wall sat down with The Art of Dialogue recently and told a story about how he ended up on Nelly<\/a>\u2018s hit record \u201cGrillz\u201d and revealed it all started with the St. Louis rapper getting tricked into purchasing a custom grill that he thought was made by Dang. The Houston rapper explained that he received a call from T.I. while the Atlanta rapper was on tour with Nelly and told Wall, \u201cYeah, man, I see my boy Nelly got a grill from you.\u201d However, he recalled being \u201cconfused, \u2019cause I\u2019m like, \u2018Man, I never met Nelly a day in my life. I\u2019d love to make him a grill,’\u201d and asked Tip what he was talking about.<\/p>\n He then explained that it was a jealous rapper that was trying to creep into his and Johnny\u2019s grill business that sold one to Nelly. \u201c\u2018You want a Paul Wall grill? Yeah I\u2019ll get you a Paul Wall grill. A Johnny? I\u2019ll get you a Johnny grill,’\u201d he said of other rappers that were also trying to sell grills during that period. \u201cWhat they mean is the Paul Wall-style\u00a0grill or a Johnny-style\u00a0grill. So that essentially is what happened. It was another person who was selling grills who basically went to Nelly and was like, \u2018Hey, wanna get you some Paul Wall grills?\u2019 And he was like, \u2018Yeah, I want some Paul Wall grills,\u2019 and they got him some grills but they weren\u2019t Paul Wall grills. It was in the similar style, but they weren\u2019t the same.\u201d<\/p>\n Eventually, Wall ran into the St. Lunatics at a hotel in New York, who then put him in touch with Nelly after learning that his grill wasn\u2019t made by Johnny Dang. He then said they decided to gift him a custom grill so he could see the difference between their work and the competition. \u201cIt was a helluva investment, because, let me tell you, that was hands down the most expensive grill we made to that point and it was a walking billboard, and as soon as Nelly got his grill he was like, \u2018Hey, I love my grill. I got this song I\u2019m doing. You wanna get on it?’\u201d<\/p>\n And the rest, as they say, is history.<\/p>\n \u201cGrillz\u201d hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100<\/a>, was nominated for best rap performance as a duo or group at the 2007 Grammys and further popularized the dental jewelry, making a custom grill from Paul Wall and Johnny Dang a must-have status symbol.<\/p>\n You can watch the full story below.<\/p>\n Best of Billboard<\/strong><\/p>\n Sign up for Billboard’s Newsletter<\/a>. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook<\/a>, Twitter<\/a>, and Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.yahoo.com \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" What would rap be without iced-out grills? New York City jeweler Eddie Plein is often credited with inventing the gold grill as we know it back in the \u201980s. His early handiwork was most notably sported by Bronx rapper Just-Ice on the album cover of his sophomore project Kool & Deadly released in 1987. Plein […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2011693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25173],"tags":[368025,368024,342800,350007],"class_list":["post-2011692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-artists","tag-custom-grill","tag-eddie-plein","tag-johnny-dang","tag-paul-wall"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/Paul-Wall-Says-Nelly-Buying-a-Knockoff-Grill-Led-to.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2011692"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2011692\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2011693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2011692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2011692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2011692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}