Songfacts®:

• This song is about an old girlfriend of Fred Durst's who betrayed him. When Durst was getting his career started in Los Angeles, he was sending money home to his girlfriend to pay the bills. Instead, she used the money to treat her and another man (known as "Scotty O" or "Teddy Swoes") to drugs and hotel rooms. In this song, Durst explains that he knew what was going on, but stayed with her for the sex - that's the "Nookie." (Thanks to Jennie from Jacksonville, Florida. Jennie briefly dated Fred Durst in his days before Limp Bizkit.)
• In a Songfacts interview with Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland, he explained how this song came together, and where the title originated. Borland explained:
  
  "'Nookie' happened at the end of another song. On one of the other songs on the album we started jamming. Lethal [Limp Bizkit's DJ] had a beat, and I was playing guitar. We started playing, making up this outro on the spot to a different song, and went, 'Whoa, this is really cool,' and we made up a quick verse/chorus. And we were like, 'Okay, what's the working title of this one going to be called?' The beat was sampled off of an Italian porn movie from the '70s or something, that Lethal had in a library. It was like, 'That beat's from a porn movie, we should call this song 'Nookie.''
  
  Then Fred came in the next day to the studio and I was like, 'We've got to show you a song, we're calling it 'Nookie' just for the time being.' And he was like, 'Okay.' And then he flipped out and went, 'Dude, that's the name of the song! I'm going to use that as the lyrics.' And that was it."
• "Nookie" is British slang for sex. This song helped popularize the term in America.
• "Nookie" was a breakthrough song for Limp Bizkit and a defining track of the nu metal era. After releasing their first album, Three Dollar Bill Y'all, in 1997, they landed a spot on Ozzfest the following year, where they memorably played in front of a giant toilet (a nod to their haters, who said they were s--t). Rap-metal, led by Korn, still had just a niche audience, but in 1999 when "Nookie" was released as the first single from Limp Bizkit's second album, Significant Other, the genre was gaining both widespread acceptance and derision. Fred Durst and co. leaned into that derision with vigor, leading a new generation of goateed, baseball-cap wearing young men in the nu metal revolution. "Nookie" got played on modern rock radio and MTV, sending the album to #1 in America. It remains their most popular song.
• In reference to the man Durst's girlfriend cheated on him with, Limp Bizkit considered naming their 2003 album "The Search for Teddy Swoes." They went with Results May Vary instead.
• Limp Bizkit played this at Woodstock '99 on the penultimate night of the ill-fated festival. By this time, the crowd was getting very aggressive, with many following the model of the previous song the band played in their setlist, "Break Stuff." Fred Durst read the crowd pretty well, and during an interlude in "Nookie," said, "The whole world is watching us right now, and the whole world is watching you. Let's put out some positive vibes in this motherf--ker and have a big-ass party."
• In the days of Napster, an anonymous parody version of this song called "Cookie" circulated, which can now be found on Youtube. In this version, Cookie Monster does it all for the cookie.