A website called sellyourgoldteeth.com; among rappers, a sudden interest in cubic zirconia; and an auction of storied hip-hop jewellery canceled for lack of potential buyers: the Wall Street Journal reports on how the recession is damaging bling culture. (Whatever happened to Roland Fryer‘s paper that was to be called “Bling-Bling”?) [%comments]
Has the Bling Bubble Burst?
and 
. You can also watch it on 
Throw out your gold teeth
And see how they roll
The answer they reveal
Life is unreal
-Steely Dan
I never understood the idea of grills anyway. It always appeared to me like these guys were trying to make the best of the fact that their dental hygiene was so bad that their teeth had rotted away.
“Bad news, you’re teeth are all rotten. You obviously never brush or floss.”
“That’s OK, I can hide the damage with my gold and diamond grill!”
That, and gold grills make it look like your teeth are yellow anyway….
“Bling Was a Bubble”….
An article I published in International Journal of Communication (IJOC), 02/2009:
http://annenberg.usc.edu/Faculty/Communication/~/media/D5FB4426DCCD420F9E7CFB58143CE670.ashx
Here’s a piece from last summer that might be the earliest analogy of the present financial crisis to hip hop culture. http://www.overthinkingit.com/2008/07/23/the-bling-bubble/
Unfortunately many of the videos that are cited in that piece have been removed from youtube; but the text is very well modeled after a serious financial writer’s.
For what it’s worth, a few months later, that same website made the “Peak Rock” thing that you once linked to, the one with annual figures for oil production overlaid on a year-by-year breakdown of Rolling Stone’s Top 500 Songs. And they also made the “Dark Bailout” video. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R1X6RQLZtoA
More recently they’ve analyzed the Ghostbusters’ finances: http://www.overthinkingit.com/2009/06/13/the-ghostbusters-risky-business-plan/
Gold caps on front teeth, sometimes decorated with a small jewel, have long been proud possessions of some underclass males.
Meth addicts often develope severely eroded tooth enamel which can be covered with a grill as a sort of badge of loserhood…..