Robbie Pardlo, City High singer, dies at 46
- - - Robbie Pardlo, City High singer, dies at 46
Wesley StenzelJuly 19, 2025 at 11:14 AM
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Robbie Pardlo of City High
Robbie Pardlo, best known as a member of the R&B group City High, has died.
The singer died Thursday at the age of 46, his representative confirmed to Entertainment Weekly. A cause of death was not provided. He died in Willingboro, N.J., TMZ reported.
Pardlo founded City High alongside his high school girlfriend, Claudette Ortiz, and their classmate Ryan Toby. Mentored by Wyclef Jean on his Wooga Booga label, the group released their first song, "What Would You Do," on the soundtrack of the Eddie Murphy and Martin Lawrence prison dramedy Life in 1999.
Jean, who helped produce the track, shared the news of Pardlo's death on Instagram. "Gone to [sic] soon," the Fugees musician wrote.
"What Would You Do," a song about the desperation caused by poverty that sampled "The Next Episode" by Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg, peaked at No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 and earned City High a nomination for Best R&B Performance by a Duo or Group With Vocal at the 2002 Grammy Awards (it ultimately lost to Destiny's Child's "Survivor").
The group released their first and only album, City High, in 2001, with Pardlo taking lead on the LP's production and Toby handling most of the writing. Its second single, "Caramel," featured Eve and peaked at No. 18 on the Billboard Hot 100. The album peaked at No. 34 on the U.S. Billboard 200, and landed at No. 136 on the year-end chart in 2001.
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Ryan Toby, Claudette Ortiz, and Robbie Pardlo of City High in 2002
City High disbanded shortly after the release of the album, and Toby and Ortiz began a relationship that ended in divorce in 2007. Pardlo continued making music with the band First Take.
A week before his death, Pardlo published a cryptic post on Threads. "This is kinda morbid," he wrote, "but I just took out a $500,000 life insurance policy on myself, and for a second I was hype — like, 'I need to hurry up and die so we can get this bread to finish remodeling this house.'"
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Pardlo died shortly after the death of Toby's daughter, Hannah. "I got the news that my niece passed...it was hard to hold it together," Pardlo wrote last month. "Hannah was a firecracker, and taken way [sic] too soon. I wish there was more I could've done. Some more advice I could've given to help her...I'm just praying for my brother Ryan Toby and sister Charlee Dean now."
on Entertainment Weekly
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