In April of this year Chance The Rapper (aka Chancellor Bennett) fired his longterm manager, Pat Corcoran (aka Pat The Manager) and replaced him with his father and brother, Ken and Taylor Bennett. Now, as Complete Music Update reports, Corcoran is suing Chance for breach of contract, claiming that the rapper ignored Corcoran’s career advice and then blamed him for the commercial failure of his 2019 debut album The Big Day. In the suit, Corcoran claims Chance violated an oral agreement to pay Corcoran 15% of his profits, and that Chance owes Corcoran “over $2.5 million of unreimbursed expenses supporting and promoting Bennett’s career.”

Corcoran’s lawsuit, filed in an Illinois court this past Monday, Nov. 30, details how he worked with Chance to build a successful career outside the major label system, including striking a deal with Apple Music to premiere Chance’s 2016 mixtape Coloring Book. (The suit does not mention how Corcoran strong-armed MTV to delete an ambivalent concert review from its website.) According to the suit, relations between Chance and Corcoran started to sour in February 2019, when, without consulting Corcoran, Chance announced his debut album would be out in July.

One section of the suit reads:

Given the significant amount of work, care and attention needed to produce an album, Corcoran expressed serious concern with the projected release date Bennett had unilaterally announced for the album. Corcoran knew that in view of commitments Bennett had in early 2019 — including his own wedding — it was likely there was not enough time for the creative process that was involved in releasing an album, and Corcoran advised Bennett in that regard.

Corcoran opposed announcing the release of any album before the recording or writing process even began, let alone was substantially completed. Compounding the issue, Bennett’s recording efforts were compromised by unproductive and undisciplined studio sessions. Procrastinations and lackadaisical effort, perpetuated by various hangers-on uninterested in the hard work of writing and recording, resulted in a freestyle-driven product of sub-par quality, a complete deviation from the meticulous writing process that brought Bennett fame for his wordplay and wit.

Corcoran says Chance’s dismissal of his advice resulted in “the forced release of a subpar product” that was “panned by many influential critics and faded from the chart after just 19 weeks.” (It’s true: For instance, in his Premature Evaluation, our own Tom Breihan dismissed The Big Day as “a tedious album of little consequence, a clear sign of a gradual slide.”) Corcoran also asserts that he advised Chance to step back from the public eye rather than go on TV, where he’d be forced to address the backlash against the album. But the rapper insisted on going through with gigs on Ellen, Colbert, and Good Morning America, which “served only to further exacerbate the failure of The Big Day.”

Per the lawsuit, the album’s flop in turn led to Corcoran to advise Chance to cancel his arena tour due to poor ticket sales: “Instead of acknowledging the numerous distractions and artistic compromises that inevitably resulted from time wasted in the studio, all of which contributed to a lacklustre album evidenced by historically low ticket sales, Bennett ultimately blamed Corcoran for the judgement rendered by his fanbase rather than accept that his own lack of dedication had doomed the project.”