Robert Pilatus (8 June 1965 – 3 April 1998) was a German singer, dancer, model, and rapper. He was a member of the pop music duo Milli Vanilli with Fab Morvan.
Pilatus was born in Munich, West Germany. His father was an African-American serviceman and his mother was a German dancer. He spent his first four years in a Bavarian orphanage before he was adopted by a Munich family. He stated he was an outsider as a child in Germany, being called "Kunta Kinte" (the African hero in the film Roots) by his classmates. After leaving his adoptive home as a teen, Pilatus worked as a model and breakdancer, and appeared as a backing singer with the group Wind at the 1987 Eurovision Song Contest in Brussels. (The band finished in second place.) He met Fab Morvan on the dance scene in Munich in 1988, and after working as models, they formed a short lived group "Empire Bizarre" which consisted of three members, Pilatus, Morvan, and Charliene,[clarification needed] performing locally with all members dancing and Rob singing lead while playing bass guitar.
Pilatus and Morvan both continued moving into music and were subsequently noticed by German music producer Frank Farian, who signed them to be part of a musical act. They signed contracts with Farian without taking legal advice. After a trip to Turkey, where the duo reportedly took part of their name from a local advertising slogan, Milli Vanilli was born. Pilatus and Morvan were surprised to learn from Farian that they would not be singing on their records. They initially refused, but were unable to pay back the advance they had received, which they had used to change and promote their images by investing in clothes and their trademark hair extensions. They decided to continue with the agreement for a short time until they had made enough money to pay back the advance. This meant that they were to be only the public faces for songs that had been pre-recorded with singers Charles Shaw and Brad Howell, who Farian thought were vocally talented but lacked marketable images. Farian had a history of acts, such as Boney M, in which most of the actual singers (including Farian himself) were replaced by other performers on stage.

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