Pat the Manager, Chance the Rapper Dispute Heads to Trial

Chance the Rapper performing live. Photo Credit: Julio Enriquez

The USA v. Live Nation antitrust trial isn’t the only music-world legal battle that’s unfolding. Now, Chance the Rapper and Pat the (ex-)Manager have taken their long-running contract dispute to the courtroom.

We’ve been covering the ugly clash of former friends and business partners – Chance “was like a brother to me,” in manager Pat Corcoran’s own words – for over half a decade. But the showdown, technically consisting of a multimillion-dollar commission complaint from Corcoran and a distinct unjust-enrichment action from Chance, just recently headed to trial in Chicago.

Unsurprisingly, then, Corcoran during a lengthy direct examination discussed more than a few components of his and Chance’s professional relationship. With the benefit of hindsight and objectivity, we can see that the association, though fruitful at the outset, was seemingly destined to deteriorate in any event.

As Corcoran explained on the stand, it was his parents and members of Chance’s family, not the grown (albeit young and inexperienced) men behind the deal, who’d initially sorted the loosely defined details of the manager-client arrangement.

Thrust into commercial prominence following the release of Acid Rap, Chance opened for high-profile acts including Mac Miller – all while Corcoran assumed sweeping responsibilities and struggled to personally cover day-to-day expenses, the manager said before the jury.

Concerningly, Corcoran also described Chance’s alleged unwillingness to sign agreements of any kind – “he didn’t want to sign or have, you know, a written agreement with anybody” – and reiterated that the artist’s music wasn’t being monetized whatsoever (“there wasn’t any music being commercialized”) even as he was performing on the same stage as Macklemore and others.

(At least on the label side, the alleged aversion to signed-and-sealed contracts hasn’t changed; Chance self-released last year’s Star Line.)

Building on this overview, Corcoran proceeded to explore how he’d stepped well outside the confines of traditional managerial duties to develop a hands-on merch operation and later a radio-promotion strategy.

And between manufacturing the actual merch, renting warehouse space, expanding the team amid an influx of orders, and more, he was “losing [his] shirt on running the merchandise operation” as it was “hemorrhaging money.” (Fans placed nearly 10,000 orders in the month after Chance in 2017 took home a trio of Grammys, per Corcoran.)

“I think it was like $354,000 was the loss that I took on operating the Chance merchandise operation,” Corcoran said.

Needless to say, revenue-sharing agreement or not, this alleged loss wouldn’t prove an encouraging sign for any business partnership. Speaking of that revenue-sharing agreement, Corcoran also spoke of his commission (15% of across-the-board net earnings with a three-year sunset clause, in his recollection) for serving as Chance’s manager – which, as with the rest of his testimony, will certainly factor into the remainder of the trial.