The objection to the N-word, and the C-word, and the D-word, and the P-word and the J-word, and the G-word in songs ,etc, isn't because the intent was necessarily hateful. It usually wasn't. It is because they were demeaning racial stereotypes, and as such, supported segregation, isolation, and the devaluing of a particular group of people.

The big problem we have is that racial and ethnic stereotypes have been a big part of our music for a long time. Without blackface minstrel shows, there would have been no ragtime, no jazz, no blues, no old time, no bluegrass, no nothing. Even the "funk" culture, which came after we had supposedly been "made aware" by the civil rights movement, is full of updated stereotypes. As to rap and hip-hop, faggedaboutit.

So how do we deal with this? I don't think that replacing a few letters with asterisks really does much of anything.