Nat Robinson left behind a career in tech to create a label that introduced the world to MC Lyte, also known as Lana Michele Moorer.
Robinson founded the Hip-Hop label First Priority Music, which materialized from an unsuccessful period in the concert promotion business and led to a more favorable outcome in the club industry. Before his entryway, he said he had worked at IBM.
“I was actually an engineer for IBM,” Nat said, per Interrupted Blogs. “I outgrew them. After that, I went into the concert business. That was a disaster. From the concert business, I went into clubs. I had a very successful club called Tribeca in lower Manhattan, and after that, I got into the music.”
First Priority Music was formed in 1986, per Robinson’s LinkedIn. He credits its inception to his children, Kirk “Milk Dee” Robinson, a Brooklyn, NY-born rapper inspired by the state’s Hip Hop scene, and Nathaniel Robinson Jr., who took on the nickname DJ Nat “Gizmo” Robinson.
“The club and music business happened because of the influence of my kids,” he said. “Milk wanted to be a rapper, and I knew a lot of people from the club business that got into the music business. I created some meetings and set it up. Ultimately, it was my kids that drove the hip hop label forward.”
Milk Dee and Gizmo became a duo under the label and called themselves Audio Two. It did not take long for them to land a hit with their 1987 “Top Billin,” per HipHopDX. The song’s success allowed the label to receive a distribution deal with Atlantic Records that same year, Robinson’s LinkedIn bio notes.
The duo also proved instrumental in helping the label secure its first female signee. As AFROTECH™ previously reported, the label held an audition, which led to its discovery of MC Lyte.
“Here I am going to this guy’s basement in Brooklyn. It could have ended so many different ways. However, I laid the first rendition of ‘I Cram to Understand U’ down on there,” MC Lyte said in an interview with “The Breakfast Club” podcast.
She signed a deal with First Priority Music and earned a $5,000 advance. In 1987, she released “I Cram To Understand U (Sam),” and followed with her debut album, “Lyte As A Rock,” the first time a female solo rapper had released a studio album, Brooklyn magazine reports.
She released several other projects under the label, including “Act Like You Know” (1991) and “Ain’t No Other” (1993). In total, she has released nine studio albums, with her latest album, “1 of 1” released on Aug. 9, 2024, per Forbes.
Reflecting on her journey today, MC Lyte said Nat Robinson guided her expectations for success, leading her to dream bigger.
“One thing that Nat Robinson said to me, and though he said many things throughout the years which helped, but the thing that I remember most is ‘we’re going to make you popular independent of a hit record,’ and once he said that, that allowed me to dream bigger to say OK I need to prepare myself for all these other moments I want to do,” she reflected on “The Breakfast Club.”
