Songfacts®:

• If you're trying to identify the apex of nu metal, look to October 17, 2000, when Limp Bizkit released their third album, Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water. Their 1999 album Significant Other had sold about 7 million copies, they were regulars on MTV, and they they had a song in the new Mission: Impossible movie ("Take A Look Around"). Filled with adrenaline and testosterone, they were the counterbalance to boy bands and teen pop that was also huge. And it wasn't just Limp: Korn, Papa Roach and Deftones were also big.
  
  "Rollin'" was the lead single from the album (not counting "Take A Look Around," released months earlier as a single and on the Mission: Impossible 2 soundtrack). A defiant middle finger to Limp Bizkit's detractors, it worked their fans into a frenzy and impelled album sales to over a million in the first week to easily claim the #1 spot on the chart. They kept on rollin'.
  
  But this was the peak: the band's fortunes, along with the nu metal sound, soon declined, just not before Chocolate Starfish And The Hot Dog Flavored Water sold 6 million copies.
• Two versions of this song appear on the album: "Rollin' (Air Raid Vehicle)" and "Rollin' (Urban Assault Vehicle)." The "Air Raid" version is just the band, but "Urban Assault Vehicle" is a remix featuring hip-hop artists DMX, Redman and Method Man, and produced by Swizz Beatz. This hip-hop version is how the song was conceived.
  
  "Rollin' was originally going to be just a straight hip-hop song," Limp Bizkit guitarist Wes Borland told Songfacts. "But after we heard it, we were like, 'No, man, we've got to turn this into a rock song.' We liked both versions so much that that's what it ended up being, two versions: a hip-hop version of the song and a rock version of the song."
• "Rollin'" was the biggest chart hit for Limp Bizkit, reaching #65 in America and #1 in the UK. In America, the "Urban Assault Vehicle" remix was the charting version, but in the UK it was the "Air Raid Vehicle" version.
  
  Limp Bizkit never charted well on the Hot 100 because pop radio didn't play them and because most fans bought the albums, not the singles. The had more impressive pop chart showings in Europe, especially the UK. This song stayed at #1 there for three weeks.
• "Rollin'" features in The Fast And The Furious, the first film in the franchise, released in 2001.
• The music video cost $3 million to make, a budget justified because Limp Bizkit were huge on MTV. It shows frontman Fred Durst cruising in his Bentley Azure, along with shots of a helicopter swooping round New York, weaving around the Statue Of Liberty and the roof of the World Trade Center, where the band is seen playing. Durst's Hollywood pals Ben Stiller and Stephen Dorff make cameo appearances at the beginning of the clip when they mistake the singer for a valet (an easy mistake with his red hat) and give him the keys to their Bentley.
  
  The video was filmed just one year before the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. The band received a letter from the World Trade Center the day before the Twin Towers were destroyed, thanking them for featuring the towers in the clip.
  
  Durst recalled in Kerrang! January 29, 2011: "I had the helicopters buzzing all around me, my band were rocking out and I remember thinking, 'This is beyond anything I could ever have imagined.'" The video received the award for Best Rock Video at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards.
• Explaining his guitar technique on this song, Wes Borland said he used a Floyd Rose tremolo system. "That's when I was really getting into using that as a part of riffs, to make things dive and come back up, and using it to give guitar riffs the bar on the guitar," he told Songfacts. "Instead of using it like a Van Halen style technique, I was actually using it on lower strings and chords, like how you can make the riffs sound when playing with the drums - give riffs this suction push and pull sound that makes everything sound more snappy."
• To build anticipation for the album, Limp Bizkit embarked on the Back 2 Basics Tour in July 2000 a few months before it was released in October. The tour offered free admission (first come, first serve), thanks to its sponsor, Napster, a file sharing service reviled my most in the industry because it let users download songs for free, upending the very profitable business model of selling CDs. Metallica, which like Limp Bizkit had a song on the Mission: Impossible 2 and played Woodstock '99, was the most vociferously anti-Napster metal band.
• Getting Redman, Method Man and DMX on this track's remix gave Limp Bizkit some credibility in the hip-hop community; when the album was released, they went on the influential New York City hip-hop station Hot 97 to promote it. (Not every rapper was a fan; Eminem called them out on "Without Me" along with Chris Kirkpatrick and Moby.)
  
  Limp Bizkit had a harder time winning over the heavy metal faithful. "Just as metal was turning a corner in terms of its perception from outsiders, the invasion of the mooks began," Decibal editor Albert Mudrian explained.
• In December 2000, WWE wrestler The Undertaker started using "Rollin'" as his entrance theme; in 2003, Limp Bizkit played it at WrestleMania XIX as he entered the ring on a motorcycle.