For seven years, the business arrangement between Chance the Rapper and the manager behind the independent run that produced Coloring Book existed mostly as something two people remembered differently. Pat Corcoran, who managed Chancelor Bennett until his dismissal in April 2020, told a Cook County jury that a spoken 2013 agreement entitled him to 15 percent of net profits across all income streams. He said the same handshake carried a sunset clause paying him for up to three years after any split.

In March, after a trial of two and a half weeks, the jury rejected his $3.8 million claim, which bundled $1.6 million in sunset commissions with $2.2 million for work he said went unpaid. "There's not one single document in the seven years they worked together that shows any evidence of a sunset," said Precious Jacobs-Perry, Chance's lead attorney. The same jury awarded Chance $35 on his countersuit for tortious interference.

The larger number arrived on October 13. Circuit Court Judge James E. Hanlon Jr. ruled that Corcoran had been Chance's agent and fiduciary, and that he breached that duty by taking commissions from merchandise vendors while collecting his management fee on the same business. As our business roundup reported, Hanlon ordered Corcoran to surrender those vendor payments and forfeit the 15 percent fee tied to merchandising. Chance's team estimates the forfeited fees alone could reach $1.5 million. The parties return to court on November 30 if they cannot agree on the figure.

A management agreement is the contract that settles four things. It sets the percentage a manager takes, which dollars that percentage touches, how long it survives after the relationship ends, and what the manager owes the artist in loyalty along the way. The Chance case turned on the last two, and neither was written down.

The Commission Represents a Percentage of the Definition

Los Angeles music attorney Erin M. Jacobson, in her series on key clauses in management deals, puts the full commission rate at a range that is often 15 to 20 percent. That number is the part artists remember, and it is rarely the part that decides what a manager is paid, because the rate means nothing until the contract defines the base it applies to.

Corcoran's claimed deal ran on net profits, which leaves costs out before anyone takes a cut. A commission on gross income lands on the full tour guarantee before the crew, the bus, the production rental and the band are paid. On a touring year, the fight over gross versus net can swing a manager's take by more than the gap between 15 and 20 percent. Deals negotiated by counsel commonly carve recording budgets, producer fees and tour support out of the commissionable base, since that money flows through the artist's account without ever becoming the artist's income.

When nothing is written, the definition gets argued from custom, which is how the dispute over Muni Long's old management began. Chaka Zulu and Jeff Dixon of the Atlanta firm Ebony Son Entertainment filed a federal complaint on Thursday, October 23, 2025, seeking more than $600,000 in commissions on live shows, recording and writing work. The filing pegs those commissions to "the agreed-upon, customary percentage of revenue she earned." Her team called the claims "unfounded" and said "no formal contract ever existed."

The Sunset Clause Decides Who Gets Paid for the Past

A sunset clause, in Jacobson's phrasing, sets out "provisions dictating that the artist must continue to pay a commission to the manager after the term." Left unnegotiated, she writes, that post-term commission often runs in "perpetuity, which means forever," and the attorney's job is to cut it down in both percentage and duration, typically through a schedule that starts at one rate and then steps down before it ends.

The logic behind the clause is fair on its face, because a manager who spent three years building a record should share in what that record earns after the split. A sunset with no written schedule becomes a claim on everything the artist releases afterward. Corcoran's three-year version collapsed the moment it had to be proven from memory against a seven-year paper trail that never mentioned it.

Publishing is where a surviving cut compounds longest, because a copyright keeps generating income for decades after the relationship that produced it. In a Los Angeles County suit filed in October 2025, Andra Day alleges that her former manager, Jeffrey Evans, kept taking 40 percent of her publishing income after their agreement expired in June 2023. She also alleges that about $1.6 million of her music, touring and deal earnings never reached her despite repeated requests for a full accounting. Evans denies the allegations. In April a judge let Day's civil theft claim proceed and declined to block her from seeking triple damages, sending the case into discovery. Artists who want to see how publishing money is collected before a manager's share is calculated can start with our guide to publishing administration deals.

Fiduciary Duty Arrives Without a Signature

The part of the Chance ruling that will travel furthest owes nothing to the missing contract. Hanlon found that Corcoran, as the artist's agent, owed Chance a fiduciary duty, the legal obligation to act in the principal's interest rather than his own. He broke it, the judge ruled, by collecting from merchandise vendors on deals he was supposed to be negotiating for Chance.

The judge also found breaches of loyalty and candor tied to an equity request involving UnitedMasters and to the Ramova and We Are the Times ventures, and wrote that Corcoran showed "a habit of saying whatever the moment requires" on the stand. He still refused the close to $11 million and the punitive damages Chance's lawyers sought, writing that "Stripping Corcoran of all his compensation across the life of the relationship would hand Bennett a windfall."

That duty becomes meaningful when a well-drafted agreement sets out the procedure. The agreement should require disclosure of any ownership, fee, or side payment involving a company that does business with the artist, grant the artist audit rights on reasonable notice, and identify the person controlling the bank account where the money is received. Day’s complaint, which focuses on accounting requests she says went unanswered, shows the artist’s view of what happens without those safeguards.

The License Question in California and New York

Managers shape careers, while agents procure work, and two of the industry's biggest states draw that line differently. California's Talent Agencies Act says in Labor Code section 1700.5 that no person may carry on the occupation of a talent agency "without first procuring a license therefor from the Labor Commissioner." Unlicensed managers who book engagements there have faced petitions before the Labor Commissioner to void their commissions. The California Supreme Court's 2008 decision in Marathon Entertainment v. Blasi softened the penalty by allowing the illegal booking work to be severed from the lawful management work.

New York's rule is looser. Its General Business Law section 171 excludes from the definition of a theatrical employment agency the business of managing artists "where such business only incidentally involves the seeking of employment therefor." For an artist signing in either state, the practical step is the same: let a licensed agent handle the booking contract and keep the manager's role defined in the agreement as management.

Reading Your Own Deal Before Year Three

The terms that decide most manager disputes are the ones artists skim at signing because the relationship feels permanent. The term length, the performance triggers that let either side exit, the key-person language naming who exactly is doing the managing, the commission base, and the sunset schedule all deserve a lawyer's red pen before the first show is booked. Each one becomes leverage later for whoever wrote it.

The Chance case also shows what a handshake costs both sides. Corcoran lost a $3.8 million claim because he could not produce a page, and Chance spent nearly six years in litigation to recover a fraction of what he alleged. Jay Scharkey, Corcoran's lawyer, drew the lesson in a single line after the March verdict: "We respect the jury's decision, but the message to music managers is clear: Get it in writing."

Hanlon has not set the final forfeiture amount. If the two sides cannot agree on it, they will be back before him on November 30.