Put jewelry where your mouth is

Put jewelry where your mouth is
Wilmington Morning Star, NC

By Sam Scott
Staff Writer
sam.scott@starnewsonline.com
DaRon Baldwin, a.k.a KYD, could already turn heads with his mouth. The junior at New Hanover High School is a member of Young But Grindin’, a local rap group that has performed all over downtown.

But he has another lure now: a molded white gold mouthpiece that gives him the glinting grin that is much revered in today’s hip-hop fashion.

“Everybody keeps complimenting me on it,” said Baldwin, who limits wearing the jewelry to performances and other special occasions.

Metal and bejeweled “grills” have been around for years. But hyped by rappers like Nelly and Paul Wall, the snap-on jewelry has been a surging trend around the country – and by trickles in the Wilmington area.

“Everybody is asking about them, especially after that song from Nelly,” said Shan Ali, manager of Jasmine Diamonds in Westfield Independence mall, which has a catalog of designs on its counter. Prices begin at $150.

“There’s no end to it,” he said. “The more you want, the more we can do to it.”
The trend has been limited in Wilmington by difficulty in ordering. Customers have to go to a dentist first to pay for a mold of their teeth, in line with legal requirements, Ali said. Molds can cost $50 to $150.

In bigger cities, some jewelers take the mold themselves, sometimes ignoring rules in certain states that consider taking an impression of someone’s mouth to be unlicensed dentistry. Baldwin got his in Atlanta where the jeweler took the mold and made the jewelry.

Real dentists don’t always smile on the fashion, saying grills risk trapping bacteria, causing gum disease as well as scratching teeth. Matthew Messina, a dentist and spokesman for the American Dental Association, cautioned about reactions to cheap metal and jewelry cleaners, which can burn gums.

“Anytime you put anything on your teeth that are going to slide on and off you have the potential for a multitude of different problems,” said Mark Janosky, a dentist
with the New Hanover Community Health Center.

Brandon Hickman, a local radio disc jockey and Murray Middle School teacher, said the roots of grills go as deep as grandmothers with gold crowns. Flavor Flav, of rap legend Public Enemy, made them big in the 1980s, he said.

This go-round has been fueled by the added ease of ordering on the Internet, Hickman said. The trend probably hit its peak earlier in the year, but any time it seems to be fading, he sees someone new wearing one, he said.

“A lot of cats wear grills,” he said.

This report contains material from the Associated Press.