Chicago musician Chance the Rapper (born Chancelor Bennett) has won $35 in a five-year legal battle against his onetime manager, Pat Corcoran (formerly known as Pat the Manager). On Friday, a Cook County jury dismissed Corcoran’s claims that the Coloring Book artist owed him $3.8 million in unpaid royalties and commissions and that Bennett’s critically-panned The Big Day was a “freestyle-driven product of sub-par quality” due to rapper’s insistence on rushing the LP’s release.
Corcoran sued Bennett in 2020 after the rapper fired him, claiming that he and Bennett had once agreed that he was entitled to three years of earnings after his firing. In 2021, Bennett countersued Corcoran for $1 million dollars, claiming his manager had mishandled business deals and attempted to collect kickbacks for his own benefit. Bennett’s lawyers further argued that Corcoran had been overpaid by $312,300 before Bennett fired him. The two creatives had worked under an informal deal for eight years, and had served as posterchildren of an independent artist-manager partnership without record label interference.
In a Chicago trial that combined the two suits, the court deliberated for two hours before determining that Corcoran owed Bennett $35. It further suggested Corcoran fork over the domain name to Bennett’s website, ChanceRaps.com, on which the manager once sold Bennett’s merch. The $35 appeared to be a symbolic gesture signaling the court’s endorsement of Bennett’s argument. As neither party had ever put any of their dealings in writing, it proved difficult for the jury to agree that significant monetary harm had occurred.
After the verdict was announced, Jay Scharkey, one of Corcoran’s lawyers, called the decision “split” and urged music managers to “get it in writing.” Scharkey told the Chicago Sun-Times, “The jury award of $35 speaks to how seriously the jury viewed Chance’s case.” But Chance was undeterred in his own interview with the Sun-Times, as the faith-inspired rapper preached unto a reporter as he left the courtroom, “I claim victory in the name of the Lord.”
