Popular music is a significant cultural medium through which societies interpret experience, construct identity, preserve memory, and challenge structures of power. In Nigeria, protest music has addressed colonial domination, military authoritarianism, corruption, inequality, economic hardship, police brutality, insecurity, and failures of governance. This study examines Nigerian popular music as a form of social philosophy, focusing on paradigmatic shifts in musical activism and political expression from 1925 to 2025. Using historical, theoretical, and analytical approaches, it traces changes in themes, genres, rhetoric, performance, audiences, and technologies of circulation. The study is informed by Critical Theory, the music-and-social-movements perspective, and Critical Discourse Analysis. It argues that Nigerian protest music has moved from indigenous communal commentary and nationalist expression toward explicit political resistance, democratic accountability, youth-centred activism, and digitally networked participation. Across these changes, recurring philosophical concerns include justice, freedom, authority, equality, responsibility, human dignity, identity, and social transformation. The study concludes that Nigerian protest music transcends entertainment: it functions as popular social philosophy, public voice, collective memory, and a cultural resource for political consciousness and social criticism.

Keywords: Popular music, social philosophy, protest music, musical activism, political expression.