Songfacts®:

• This fiery rebuke to European colonialism in Africa finds Burna Boy tackling miseducation, systemic racism and social unrest.
  
  You turn around and you blame
  Them for their anger and rage
  Put them in shackles and chains
  Because of what they became
  We are the monsters you made
  
  Angered by the oil exploiters he was witnessing in his Nigerian home state of Rivers, Burna Boy started to write the song during the COVID-19 lockdown. "It's like someone digging up under your house, taking what they want that may be valuable to them," he explained to Apple Music. "But they've destroyed your home, and now it's unsafe and now it's no longer home to you again. The environmental situation has been going on for years and years and no one is helping, but then people will only hear about the pipe bombings or the kidnappings. They should understand that it's never just that one side to the story and that everything has a root cause."
• Burna Boy wrote this protest anthem prior to the police killing of George Floyd, but it ties in with the ensuing scrutiny concerning historical figures and institutions. During the second verse, Burna Boy takes issue with the 18th-century Scottish explorer Mungo Park, who the Nigerian singer was taught in school "discovered the river Niger."
  
  The fool
  That said they found river Niger
  They've been lying to you
  Ain't no denying the truth
  See what I'm tryin' to do
  
  "This is a river that has been drank from and bathed in, and children have been given birth to in, for thousands and thousands of years," he seethed to NME. "Now suddenly a man called Mungo Park comes from f---ing England or some s--t and 'discovers' the Niger? How do you discover something that people have their history in? Then you go and teach these people's children that in schools! That's something to fight against. That's something that needs to be f---ing blown up into f---ing space."
• Chris Martin croons the hook on this fusion of reggae and rock. Burna Boy explained to Apple Music's Zane Lowe that after recording the song, he left a space on the chorus to be sung by someone that could provide a contrast to his critique of white Western imperialism. The Coldplay frontman was the only white pop star Burna could think of who could bring that equilibrium and still relate. "In my mind I'm like, there's only one person I could possibly think of to fit this, to bring out this message in the way that would have the balance, to make it appealing to everyone else," he said.
• "Monsters You Make" melodically borrows from Michael Jackson's 1987 hit "Dirty Diana."
• The song starts off with a sample of Afrobeat pioneer Fela Kuti. Burna Boy has a family link to his fellow his Nigerian artist: His maternal grandfather, Benson Idonije, once managed Kuti.
• The track ends with an excerpt from a 1987 interview with the Ghanaian poet and academic Ama Ata Aidoo where she expresses her disdain to the white interviewer for various violations against the African people by the Western world.
  
  Burna told NME: "We're still in the same position. We're still on the losing side to this day. We're still giving, and to this day we have nothing in return. It's a truth that needs to be told. Everyone wants to come and sugarcoat it and try to be politically correct. Me, I'm not doing that no more. For me, I know what the truth is – and the truth can never be politically correct."
• Burna Boy released this as the second single from Twice as Tall. The record won Best Global Music Album at the Grammy Awards in 2021.