yego.me
💡 Stop wasting time. Read Youtube instead of watch. Download Chrome Extension

The Secret History of Grillz | Explorer


2m read
·Nov 11, 2024

Deep in an underwater cave on Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, a team of archaeologists made a groundbreaking discovery: the skulls of ancient Maya, who ruled over a 4,000-year-old civilization. Perhaps most surprising was that these skulls reveal the ancient history of grills, a little-known story that modern-day fans are mostly unaware of.

When grills are in your mouth, you get a sense of power and dignity. What people don't know is that grills have an unexpected history, one that goes back literally thousands of years. These grills want to demonstrate status; it’s like saying, "I am successful in life, that I can just show my teeth now I have money, so look at my teeth." It doesn't sound so different than what grills stand for today.

So why do they get such mixed reactions? When grills first emerged in the U.S. in the early eighties, it was through immigrants from the African Diaspora who were going through tough economic times. Ironically, gold is one of the cheapest ways to fill cavities, so many Black neighborhoods in Brooklyn suddenly had all these people with gold teeth. Native New Yorkers started to get gold teeth as a fashion statement, and the rise of hip-hop in the eighties led to a reclaiming of what they could represent, turning a sign of poverty into proof of empowerment.

Grills gained mainstream attention around 1996 when Vietnamese immigrant Johnny Dang began making his own blinged-out version of them.

"My name is Johnny Dang; they call me the king of bling, a.k.a. the grill master. I will say that a lot of people out there have a misconception of grills. It's been a big part of our culture. Okay, so I remember being very small and seeing my grandma with gold caps right here in my mouth. I have no felony criminal history. Just because somebody chooses to show them by putting them in their mouth makes them no different from the person that has eight cars but is cheap. So you got to be a hard worker to get something like this, you know what I'm saying?"

"Yeah, not cleaning the grill can cause bad breath, so make sure you still brush your teeth two to three times a day. Keep it polished, keep shining, keep smiling." [Music]

More Articles

View All
How Many Moons Could Earth Handle? #kurzgesagt #shorts
How many moons could Earth handle? The main factor is space. Any moon needs a clean orbit and we have to take two things into account. One, it can’t be too far; otherwise, it won’t follow a stable orbit around us. Two, it can’t be too close either, or the…
How to Improve Your Life in 24 HOURS
[Music] If you’ve ever browsed self-improvement forums like on Reddit, then you’ll often come across some pretty good advice, some pretty questionable stuff—no doubt. But every once in a while, there’s a little nugget of wisdom that sticks with you, and …
Would Headlights Work at Light Speed?
Hey, Vsauce. Michael here. If you were driving in a car at the speed of light and you turned on your headlights, what would happen? Would light be able to come out, or would your headlights just stay dark? Or maybe light would come out, but it just pull …
THE 18-YEAR-OLD who sold $10-MILLION in Real Estate his FIRST YEAR (How He Did It)
That’s how I got my first open houses. They send an office-wide email, I was on my phone, I was found in a minute. Later, a few weeks later, I closed my first deal just under 3.2 million. Since then, I’ve closed six deals; the seventh will be closing in t…
Biodiversity and ecosystem health: a Hawaiian Islands case study | Khan Academy
When you think of islands, you might think of pristine beaches and palm trees gently swaying along with a warm breeze. Sounds like paradise! As a scientist, islands are my kind of place for research. Islands are very beautiful, and they also have a lot o…
Can the US avoid the End of an Empire?
Is there a political solution in the US to avoid the end of Empire, or is it a function of physics? I think this is a big part of, like, Sax’s point of view that there’s a solution; we need to change these people. Or are there too many, call it, conflatin…