One account of the growing regularity with which the changing face of Spain can be observed in the cultural production of its inhabitants, it is now a burgeoning field of academic study. Yet very little has been produced on the self-representation via such channels of immigrants and other residents whose ethnic background differs from Spain's (what has been called 'suspect') whiteness.

In this paper, I draw on and adapt Paul Gilroy's conceptual space of the 'black Atlantic' and Simon Frith's understanding of the musical performance of identities in order to examine the work of the two most prominent black Spanish rap musicians, Frank T and El Chojín. In view of their exclusion from dominant notions of what it is to be Spanish (as they detail in several of their lyrics), these two MCs construct alternative identities in dialogue with the international black diaspora by borrowing and sampling from African-American and African musical style and voices.