Lyrics for several songs on Double Nickels on the Dime were written by friends such as Henry Rollins of Black Flag, Jack Brewer of Saccharine Trust, and SST co-owner Joe Carducci.

However, after hearing labelmates Hüsker Dü's double album Zen Arcade (1984), which had been recorded a month earlier, Minutemen decided to write more material.

[16] The band drew straws to select songs; Hurley won the draw and decided to pick his solo track "You Need the Glory", followed by Boon and Watt.

Exploring racism and the strife of the working class with both gravity and humor, he composed the song after his supervisor would not let him listen to jazz and soul music on the radio at his day job, calling it "nigger shit".

Influenced by James Joyce's novel Ulysses (the subject of "June 16th") and the stream of consciousness literary technique in general, Watt's lyrics were often complex and philosophical.

"[16] The album was named Double Nickels on the Dime as a reaction to the Sammy Hagar song "I Can't Drive 55," a protest against the federally imposed speed limit of 55 miles per hour on all U.S. highways in place at the time.

[16] Minutemen decided that driving fast "wasn't terribly defiant"; Watt later commented that "the big rebellion thing was writing your own fuckin' songs and trying to come up with your own story, your own picture, your own book, whatever.

"[15] The band illustrated the theme on the cover of Double Nickels on the Dime, which depicts Watt driving his Volkswagen Beetle at exactly 55 miles per hour ("double nickels" in trucker slang) traveling southbound through downtown Los Angeles, where Interstate 10 ("The Dime"[22] in trucker slang) meets the San Pedro Intersection of Route 11/110,[23] also known as the Harbor Freeway, toward the band's hometown of San Pedro, California.

"[15][24] Dirk Vandenberg, the band's "buddy/contributor," took photos from the backseat as Watt drove under the sign to San Pedro; it took three circuits of the highway and two days of photography before Minutemen were happy with the cover.

[25] Vandenberg later commented on the cover art: "There were three elements that Mike [Watt] wanted in the photo: a natural kind of glint in his eyes reflected in the rearview mirror, the speedometer pinned exactly at 55mph, and, of course, the San Pedro sign guiding us home".

Titled, "Wheels of Fortune," the sampler put nine of the album's "deep cuts" onto one side of a 12" record and featured an etching by Raymond Pettibon on the other.

[28] It features the band playing amidst rubble as a fighter plane "piloted" by Ronald Reagan, edited from public domain footage, fires at them.

"[30] Watt reverted to the original mix for a 1989 CD release of Double Nickels on the Dime,[30] but did not include the previously omitted songs.

In a January 2006 interview, Watt announced his intention to discuss a remastered full Double Nickels on the Dime CD release with SST owner Greg Ginn.

Robert Palmer of The New York Times called the album "more varied musically than any of their earlier disks", adding that the band "think of themselves as town criers, addressing their young constituencies directly with lyrics that apply to the life styles they share, teaching such values as tolerance of cultural, racial and sexual differences".

[40] The Village Voice critic Robert Christgau described Boon as a "somewhat limited singer" but "a hell of a reader, with a guitar that rhymes", and remarking "this is poetry-with-jazz as it always should have been".

[42] Reviewing the album in February 1985 for Rolling Stone, David Fricke awarded the album three and a half stars, and also praised Boon's technique, stating: "The telegraphic stutter and almost scientific angularity of singer-guitarist D. Boon's chordings and breakneck solos heighten the jazzier tangents he dares to take," but that "Double Nickels on the Dime's best moments go far too quickly.

[5] Journalist Michael Azerrad, profiling Minutemen in his book Our Band Could Be Your Life (titled after a lyric from "History Lesson – Part II"), named Double Nickels on the Dime as "one of the greatest achievements of the indie era" and described it as a "Whitman's sampler of left-wing politics, moving autobiographical vignettes, and twisted Beefheartian twang".

[37] Although not commercially successful upon its release, Double Nickels on the Dime marked the point at which many punk bands began to ignore the stylistic limitations of the hardcore scene.