Being a migrant in Australia, according to the author, rapper and poet Omar Musa, is a lot like constantly applying for a visa to somewhere you already grew up.

In twin releases due at the end of this month – a book of poetry, Millefiori, and a hip-hop album, Since Ali Died – Musa speaks of seeing too many non-white Australians caught out in the trap of the model minority: where you can spend your whole life trying to fit in, only to discover that some people never thought you belonged.

“I was thinking a lot about what Yassmin Abdel-Magied went through, or is going through,” he tells Guardian Australia. “Early on, Yassmin was embraced as a very fun and friendly and vivacious presence – and she is – but as soon as she was perceived to have put a foot wrong, all of a sudden she wasn’t Australian anymore. She was demonised and people were baying for her blood.

“I’m an Asian-Australian and that has always been considered the model minority: working hard, putting your head down. But I’m also Muslim and that’s kind of the opposite: one of the most demonised minorities.”

The Malaysian-Australian writer, who was raised in Queanbeyan on the outskirts of Canberra, says the album’s lead single, Assimilate, also grapples with how the racism experienced by migrants stems from the colonisation of Indigenous people.

Monday’s announcement that Triple’s Hottest 100 will be moved from Australia Day on January 26 – a shift that Musa credits to the activism of Indigenous musicians – came as a timely reminder of music’s capacity to create change.

“It’s pretty exciting to see that artists can lead the way,” he says. “Surely it’s been a long time coming but that sort of sustained pressure, things like A.B. Original’s [song] January 26 were so important. People are clearly listening to Aboriginal artists and what they have called for for a long time. ... One small win can’t change the fact that the national day of this country still happens on a day that commemorates genocide and invasion. It’s not the be all and end all but symbols matter and it shapes our narrative.”

On Assimilation, Musa says it was crucial he included an Aboriginal voice, and performed alongside Indigenous rapper Tasman Keith. “When talking about assimilation in this country, [the Indigenous perspective is] the most important perspective. Genocide sets the basis of racial discrimination in this country. As much as Muslims can be demonised, that’s something I can never forget.”

A few years go, Musa says he was offered an Australia Day ambassadorship and turned it down. He was flooded with online abuse as a result, saying he was proof of why Muslims shouldn’t be let into Australia.

“You can speak English as well as anyone,” Musa says. “You can be smart and friendly and part of the mainstream but, deep down, there are a lot of people who don’t consider you to be legitimately Australian and are willing to throw you in the trash.”

Taken together, Musa’s poetry and music are concerned with the way racist and misogynistic language impacts marginalised communities.

“I see what [author and commentator] Don Watson would call a degradation of public language,” he says. “On one end is this hazy, cloudy, bureaucratic jargon, which conceals the truth and means we can never quite pin down what a politician or a bureaucrat is exactly saying. It has a narcotic affect on us that leads to apathy.

“On the other extreme, politicians use jingoism and the most destructive sledgehammer-type language to bang us over the head. These things combined leave us incapable of action and understanding. I see it as a responsibility of the writers and poets to come up with new forms of language that can slice through this type of public language that we see.”

He picks up specifically on the functions of misogynistic language in his poem The Boys, “They whip words into the cake mix – slut, bitch, whore, lowy, ganga, mutt ... Enraged at the thought that things might change”.

“I don’t see it as separate that I grew up using words like slut, bitch and whore, and that we have a structure that allows a 17% gender pay gap or casual violence against women,” he says. “It’s a different facet of the same beast. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve thought hip-hop doesn’t just have to be a mirror, it can also be a projection of what the world could be. If we look at it through the lens of equity and justice, we have to brave enough to hold ourselves to account.”

For Musa, the way forward lies with the people he calls circuit-breakers. For him, they were his parents, and also legendary boxer Muhammad Ali.

“Quite early in my life, there was a kid at my primary school who would really bully me a lot and always say that my skin was the same colour as shit. One day I told my parents I wish I was white and that’s the only time in my life that I said that.

“What a horrible thing that is, feeling so othered that you literally want to change your skin to fit into the mainstream, that at such a young age I could have internalised that hate.”

Soon after, his parents introduced him to Ali – “a charismatic, handsome black boxer” who “taught me to be proud of my skin and Muslim faith”.

He says he sees circuit-breakers among young people and can only hope to become one himself.

“I see something like the Bankstown poetry slam and there’s so many people doing it who have been so demonised and demoralised for so many years, post 9/11 and Cronulla riots, bravely and proudly telling their stories. Maybe that kind of attitude will bleed into other areas of public life.”

• Millefiori by Omar Musa is out now through Penguin. Since Ali Died is available from 1 December