Pat “The Manager” Corcoran and Chancelor “The Rapper” Bennett, two self-taught kids from Chicago, set the bar for what independent artists can achieve. Pat the Manager details how the two met, the backlash around the release of Coloring Book, and the one thing that threatened their independence. Chance and Pat’s decision to roll with Apple Music for the release of Coloring Book was met with some criticism as people believed it changed their narrative of being independent. Pat disagrees with that stance, and also explains why they went with Apple:
“We wanted to put the project in the hands of someone who was going to take the project seriously, who understood Chance, who would love the music and would be a champion for that music,” he says around the 32:50 mark. “We took all the meetings and the phone calls. We spoke with everyone: Tidal, SoundCloud, Spotify, Apple Music, even smaller streaming services like Audiomack. It was sort of like taking meetings as a high school all-star athlete and going to different colleges and seeing who’s gonna care about us the most and who’s going to help put us in the right position to win and succeed and have a great career in the majors. At the end of the day we went with the company that believed in Chance most… it wasn’t about the money. It was about the people inside that building.”
Pat also details the pushback they received from Def Jam when securing features from Kanye West, Justin Bieber, and more for Coloring Book. “It took the wind out of my sails when the first thing I heard from the Def Jam CEO was, ‘No way… not gonna happen. No way in fucking hell.'”
“Those were tough conversations to have, especially with being so close to the Kanye camp,” Pat adds.