Rick Rubin, who produced Toxicity for System of a Down, cites this song as one of his most important projects. He told Rolling Stone:

This song was originally going to be called “Self-Righteous Suicide,” and the record company rebelled. I remember wanting to go to the mat and keep the title, and the band decided, “Let’s call it ‘Chop Suey!’” which I thought was kind of funny.

Chop-suey is the Americanization of the Chinese quick dish tsap sui, which means “odds and ends, mixed bits” in the Cantonese dialect. The song title is a play on “Self-right-Chop Suey-cide,” that has a further sort of humor in that they mixed up a controversial word into a nonsensical word to create a more ‘radio-friendly’ title.

The song enjoyed success, climbing the charts after its August 2001 release before virtually disappearing from airwaves after 9/11. The song’s chorus, with its congratulatory “self-righteous suicide,” and lament, “I cry when angels deserve to die” was considered a bit too raw for listeners at the time. In the wake of the tragedy, Clear Channel Communications (now iHeartMedia) put out a memo to its subsidiary radio stations temporarily blackballing (but not outright banning) it, along with 164 other “lyrically questionable” songs. Eventually, the record resurfaced on the charts—in part due to its earlier popularity, in part due to the lack of new singles released that September. However, it remains one of System of a Down’s worst performing US singles, particularly relative to the song’s global performance.

Although the lyrics are viewed as confrontational, the singer is actually challenging the listener to “wake up” and reconsider the way that they judge and deride people who are engaged in self-destructive behaviors. The song culminates in a biblical connection to Jesus before his death on the cross, with the singer ostensibly having chosen his “self-righteous suicide” so that these ‘sinners’ would be forgiven.