Paul Wall Says Nelly Buying a Knockoff Grill Led to Their Team-Up on the Hot 100-Topping Hit ‘Grillz’

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 ’80s. 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 then took his Eddie’s 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 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.

Wall sat down with The Art of Dialogue recently and told a story about how he ended up on Nelly‘s hit record “Grillz” 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, “Yeah, man, I see my boy Nelly got a grill from you.” However, he recalled being “confused, ’cause I’m like, ‘Man, I never met Nelly a day in my life. I’d love to make him a grill,’” and asked Tip what he was talking about.

He then explained that it was a jealous rapper that was trying to creep into his and Johnny’s grill business that sold one to Nelly. “‘You want a Paul Wall grill? Yeah I’ll get you a Paul Wall grill. A Johnny? I’ll get you a Johnny grill,’” he said of other rappers that were also trying to sell grills during that period. “What they mean is the Paul Wall-style grill or a Johnny-style grill. So that essentially is what happened. It was another person who was selling grills who basically went to Nelly and was like, ‘Hey, wanna get you some Paul Wall grills?’ And he was like, ‘Yeah, I want some Paul Wall grills,’ and they got him some grills but they weren’t Paul Wall grills. It was in the similar style, but they weren’t the same.”

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’t 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. “It 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, ‘Hey, I love my grill. I got this song I’m doing. You wanna get on it?’”

And the rest, as they say, is history.

“Grillz” hit the top of the Billboard Hot 100, 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.

You can watch the full story below.