Punch the words “Hot Nigga” into YouTube, and you might be a little confused about which video to watch first. The original version was created by the recently arrested New York rapper Bobby Shmurda. It was inescapable across the US this summer, buoyed by a menacing, addictive beat and Shmurda’s gimmicky dance moves.

But what about all those other songs – the ones that share the same title but are clearly by different artists? Within hours of Shmurda’s song blowing up, these versions started appearing; reworks by Juicy J, French Montana, Remy Ma. Same beat, different lyrics. It’s not the first time it has happened – if a song captures the imaginations of other hip-hop artists, they will start making their own versions within hours of its release.

And here’s the really weird thing. Hip-hop might be an extremely competitive genre, but all this reworking is welcomed, even celebrated, by the original track creators. Jahlil Beats, who made the beat for Shmurda’s tune, certainly has no problem with it. “I look at it as promotion,” he says. “When [fans] see a Hot Nigga freestyle, they wanna find the original version. It’s all about promo.”

Jahlil, born Orlando Tucker, is one of those fast-talking, constantly moving producers who push out hundreds of beats a year. Hot Nigga was originally made for Lloyd Banks, who released the song under the name Jackpot in 2012. “He just left it,” the producer says. “I don’t think he was really feeling it. I actually put the instrumental out on a mixtape I had, Crack Music 6, and that’s where Bobby found it.”

Now that beat has become a true phenomenon, its signal boosted by dozens of artists creating their own versions. For those performers, DIY interpretations offer a chance to rock over instrumentals they might never have been offered. It is the same process that has, in the past, led to multiple versions of Lil Wayne’s A Milli, or Ace Hood’s Bugatti.

For Jahlil Beats, it means money in the bank every time the instrumental is played. “If a DJ plays a freestyle with my beat, I get paid through my Ascap,” he says, referring to the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, which handles royalties. “It’s crazy – this is the first time this has actually happened to me.”

In any other circumstances doing this kind of thing would earn you a snotty notice from a lawyer. Not here. Jahlil Beats isn’t the only producer to be unfazed by artists reworking his tracks. Mississippi rapper and producer Big K.R.I.T has both remade other artists’ music, and had the same thing done to his own work.

“It doesn’t bother me,” he says. “I pride myself on feeling like I can make a beat for anybody, and that my music can inspire people to make dope songs without me having to guide them.” While not every producer feels the same way – Los Angeles super producer DJ Mustard recently took to Twitter to express his anger at rappers jacking his beats – it’s still a widely-accepted practice.

Now that a hot track can spawn so many versions, speed is crucial. Hit songs often have a short shelf life, and a rapper who comes late to the party might struggle to get noticed. They have to pick up on the track, write their own version, then record, mix, master and release it, all in an extremely short time.

Brooklyn rapper Joell Ortiz is one of the undisputed masters as far as timing is concerned. Big Sean’s 2013 song Control featured an aggressive verse from Kendrick Lamar that inspired plenty of artists to drop responses on the same beat – particularly those who took exception to the Los Angeles-based Lamar claiming that he was the “king of New York”. Ortiz’s version, Outta Control, was the first one out.

“Control came out in the evening,” Ortiz recalls, “and I didn’t know. I woke up the next morning, and was like, what the heck is everybody talking about? I heard it at about 9am, and immediately called my engineer, and said, I need you in the studio ASAP. We got there at about 11 or 12, by two it was finished, and we put it out.”

Getting hold of a workable version of a beat is usually a case of finding a segment without vocals, then chopping it up and looping it. That’s how Ortiz ended up rocking over a perfectly formed version of Control less than 24 hours after the original dropped.

“It wouldn’t surprise me if [Control producer] No I.D. said, ‘Let’s leave a little bit of space,’” Ortiz says. We couldn’t reach No ID for comment, but even if we could, we doubt he’d let on.

The concept of rapping over other artists’ beats can be traced back to the “version” culture of Kingston, Jamaica, where reggae producers would make an instrumental track, then record multiple vocal interpretations by different artists. Perhaps the most notable application of this idea to hip-hop came in 1999, when Sporty Thievz recycled TLC’s No Scrubs on their parody track No Pigeons. One of its greatest pioneers, however, was 50 Cent, who made a name for himself spitting over other people’s beats on his early mixtapes.

Mickey Factz, a rapper with a long history of this type of work, says its roots really lie in hip-hop’s love of sampling. “It’s always been a very young genre, and we borrow from everything,” he says. “It’s no different from someone freestyling over another record, and making it more popular. There’s nothing wrong with it – it’s showcasing a talent for having an ear for music, and trying to create something that nobody would think of doing.”

So is any of this legal? After all, it is the reuse of a copyrighted tune, and in the murky world of music law, that can be a tricky thing.

“Strictly speaking? These unauthorised versions are probably not legal,” says Kevin Parks, a music copyright lawyer with the Chicago firm of Leydig, Voit and Mayer.

With every song, Parks says, there are two different copyrights that need to be applied: one to the song itself – the lyrics, notes and beat – and one to the actual recording. “With Control, we’re looking at a song with at least four co-writers,” he says, “and that song copyright is owned in percentages by at least four different publishing companies. Then you’ve got the recorded work that was made for Def Jam, so you have them as the copyright holder for the sound recording. With that rights distribution, the question is, which of those copyrights did those unauthorised versions infringe?”

As such, it’s hard to say who would prevail in court. “The bottom line, technically speaking,” Parks says, “is that the unauthorised use of small portions of both the song and the recording could constitute two separate acts of copyright infringement. The rights owners on both sides would have a claim.”

The kicker? So far, we cannot find a single existing challenge by a label or rights-holder. Not one. It is also unlikely that there will be one anytime soon. This is a feature of hip-hop that is not going anywhere.

“For someone to respect your music enough to sample it themselves is almost the ultimate goal,” says Big K.R.I.T. “You did something so jamming that your favourite rapper wants to put his own version out. That’s dope.”