MILAN — Alessandro Mahmoud recently won a prestigious Italian song contest with his Italian-language rap tune “Money,” tinged with a Middle Eastern flavor. The lyrics recall how his Egyptian father “drank champagne during Ramadan” or beckoned him home from the playground with calls of “waladi habibi ta’aleena” — Arabic for “My son, my love, come here.”

But it turns out that Italy’s interior minister, Matteo Salvini, was not a fan of the song.

“#Mahmood............... meh............ The most beautiful Italian song?!?” Mr. Salvini wrote on Twitter following the result last month. Soon after, a member of his anti-immigrant League party proposed a law to limit foreign songs on the radio.

Since then, Mr. Mahmoud, whose stage name is Mahmood, has been thrust into the center of a national debate about what it means to be Italian at a time when critics say the country’s most powerful politician seems intent on stoking racism and xenophobia — not only against new migrants but also legal immigrants who have lived in Italy for years.

To that, Mr. Mahmoud, a 26-year-old of Sardinian and Egyptian ancestry, has an easy answer.

“I’m super Italian, 100 percent,” said Mr. Mahmoud, who, in further proof of his nationality, still lives at home with his mother.