Australian poet and rapper Omar Musa on what fuels his work — and the issue of Iggy Azalea

Omar Musa is not shy when he speaks of where he came from, a place he refers to as "Struggletown" — now facing the same kind of gentrification he says he's seeing everywhere he goes. But it's the issues he first witnessed there, those feelings of isolation, anger and powerlessness that continued into adulthood, that drive his work as a poet, rapper and writer.

For Musa, who was raised Muslim and whose heritage is Irish-Malaysian, growing up in Australia left him feeling like an outsider. This feeling was only compounded by the fact that his father came to Australia only five years after the "White Australia" policy came to an end.

"We were dealing with this legacy of racism," Musa tells Shad.

Iggy Azalea's 'verbal blackface'

The issue of cultural appropriation, widely discussed in North America, is not unknown to Australia. When it comes to Australian hip-hop, Musa says the two major problems that arise are the masking of an Australian accent and, as in the West, the appropriation of black culture — both of which he sees in Iggy Azalea.

"It's one thing to be drawn to black culture and to be a part of it, but when you don't show allyship to other parts of black culture when it starts to get hard — that to me is deeply problematic."