The tracks were from the band’s upcoming No. 1 album ‘Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water’
On this day 25 years ago, Limp Bizkit released two new tracks – “My Generation” and “Rollin’ (Air Raid Vehicle).” On the heels of their hit “Take a Look Around” which was released as a single in July of 2000 after appearing on the soundtrack for Mission: Impossible 2. The band was still riding the wave of their 1999 smash Significant Other, and “My Generation” and “Rollin'” became instant hits. Debuting at No. 65 on the Billboard Hot 100, “Rollin'” became the band’s highest charting single in the U.S. and remained on the chart for 17 weeks. The music videos for both songs became mainstays on MTV’s TRL, with “Rollin'” eventually taking the top spot in March of 2001. The songs would serve as anchors of Chocolate Starfish, which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 and was a multi-platinum global success for the band.
Revisit both music videos for the songs below.
Limp Bizkit’s third album, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water, arrived on October 17, 2000 as the band’s full-throttle bid to cement the mainstream crossover they’d achieved with Significant Other. Writing and recording were crammed into January–August 2000 while the group juggled heavy touring; initial sessions with Rick Rubin fizzled after creative differences, and longtime collaborator Terry Date stepped back in to steer production alongside the band (with Swizz Beatz contributing on select cuts). Sessions sprawled across marquee rooms on both coasts and abroad—NRG, Westlake and Larrabee in Hollywood, Studio Litho in Seattle, Long View Farm in Massachusetts, The Hit Factory in New York, Olympic in London, and South Beach in Miami—underscoring how aggressively the camp pushed to meet a fast timeline. The record bottled the era’s nu-metal maximalism—DJ Lethal’s textures, Wes Borland’s rubbery, detuned riffing, and Fred Durst’s bratty bark—while roping in hip-hop collaborators and soundtrack synergies (“Take a Look Around,” hat-tipping Lalo Schifrin’s Mission: Impossible theme, doubled as the lead single).
The release became a commercial phenomenon. Chocolate Starfish debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 with 1,054,511 first-week U.S. sales—then the biggest opening for a rock album in the SoundScan era—and held No. 1 in week two as well. In Canada it opened at No. 1 with nearly 100,000 first-week units. In the U.K., the album climbed to No. 1 in January 2001, part of a rare “chart double” with “Rollin’” topping the singles list the same week. Within months the set raced to multi-platinum status in the U.S., ultimately certified 6-times Platinum by the RIAA, with multi-platinum awards in other territories
Singles kept the momentum rolling. “Take a Look Around” powered European charts and earned the band a GRAMMY nomination for Best Hard Rock Performance at the 43rd Annual GRAMMY Awards, while “Rollin’ (Air Raid Vehicle)” became an MTV era staple; its high-flying video—shot partly atop the World Trade Center—won Best Rock Video at the 2001 MTV Video Music Awards. Later radio drivers “My Way” and “Boiler” extended the album’s footprint well into 2001.
By any metric, Chocolate Starfish and the Hot Dog Flavored Water was a runaway blockbuster. It set opening-week sales records, topped charts on both sides of the Atlantic, and piled up certifications: the album reached 4× Platinum in the U.S. within two months, 5-times by spring 2001, and 6-times by April 2002; Canada certified it 6-times Platinum by that fall. These markers, combined with the band’s dominant TRL/MTV presence and a headline slot on the Anger Management Tour, made Chocolate Starfish the peak of Limp Bizkit’s commercial powers and one of nu-metal’s defining releases at the turn of the millennium.
Limp Bizkit – Chocolate Starfish and the Hotdog Flavored Water [Flip/Interscope, 2000]
1. Intro
2. Hot Dog
3. My Generation
4. Full Nelson
5. My Way
6. Rollin’ (Air Raid Vehicle)
7. Livin’ It Up
8. The One
9. Getcha Groove On [feat. Xzibit]
10. Take a Look Around
11. It’ll Be OK
12. Boiler
13. Hold On [feat. Scott Weiland]
14. Rollin’ (Urban Assault Vehicle) [feat. DMX, Method Man, Redman, Swizz Beatz]
15. Outro