Innovative duo, A.V. “Supreme” Perkins and Marian “Skinni Bee” Andoh-Clarke created their University of Dope card game somewhat by accident, but there was no mistaking that it was a great idea. Once they realized that nothing of its kind really existed—a true Hip-Hop trivia game with a twist—they knew they had to develop it into reality.
Since that journey began in 2016, the card game has become quite the phenomenon, selling thousands of boxes, releasing several remixes, and becoming available in Target stores nationwide.
Over the years, the University of Dope game has also become an immersive experience with U Dope Live events. The duo recently took the experience to Art Basel in Miami, Florida, for a one-of-a-kind event.
We recently caught up with one half of the team to talk about developing the brand, Hip-Hop’s influence on her life and much more. Check out the full A.V. Perkins interview here…
Parle Mag: Talk to me a little bit about the beginning of your journey. I know you’re from The Bronx, talk to me about your come up, and what’s inspired the woman that you are today.
A.V Perkins: Well, you know, I grew up with my parents and my siblings. I have a whole bunch of them. Caribbean background, you know, first generation born in America, and that definitely helped shape me to who I am today. You know, growing up in the Bronx, you know, a lot of people have the sad stories from the Bronx, from New York. You know, 80s, 90s, it’s giving Juice, (laughs) but my perception of my childhood was not like that. My father worked. My mother stayed at home with me, and my siblings, and that really helped mold me. I don’t have children, but I know with parents time, time and money, right? I think that’s everyone’s like kind of hold up, time and money for sure to raise children. But, she was able to give so much time, you know, to us, and school. Just being active can change the whole game for a young person. I think that’s how a good chunk of how my childhood was when I grew up. I went to college, I went to College in Connecticut and that’s where I met my business partner, so, you know, it was just, it’s been a journey in that way, but my parents definitely helped like shape it.
Parle Mag: Hip-Hop! It’s a lifestyle, right, so, it’s part of our lives. But when did you first feel like you and hip hop connected like when? When was that moment for you?
A.V Perkins: I feel like Hip-Hop, and I connected—it definitely had to be around the 5th grade and depending on who you asked, that might be like a late bloomer, right? But like, it was around me for sure. But like the time where someone was like, OK, when did you fall in love with hip hop? I feel like it was around this time 5th grade, you know, and maybe a little bit younger. I remember there was a time, you know, the boys in the classes they were like, ‘oh, you know, girls, they don’t know the words, they just know the chorus.’ Right? And I’m like, who are you to tell me I don’t know something, I know everything because I’m 10 right! All 10 year-olds. You know everything. So, you know, I remember this so vividly. Like we would have, like, rap battles but with other people’s songs. Like, it was crazy freestyling, with other people’s lyrics! It became who is delivering it the hardest!
Parle Mag: Right.
A.V Perkins: I think just the spirit, of upsetting others (laughs). Really just shaped my love for the genre. And also, my brother, my older brother. He was very much like, ‘you know, you gotta know the lyrics. You gotta know all this stuff, da da da da da, you know.’ I’m like, you know, this is a little intense (laughs). ‘Can we just like chill? It’s not that deep.’ That’s how it was, but you know, I guess it worked because between those instances here I am.
Parle Mag: Right.
A.V Perkins: Good old fashioned hazing.
Parle Mag: It always works. It always works. Who are some of those artists—I know it was fifth grade, but who are some of those artists that you can remember listening to?
A.V Perkins: I mean, it’s the same ironically, almost the same artists I listen to today. Uh, The Notorious [B.I.G.] is my favorite for sure. Always has been, since way back when, I was learning the lyrics. I’m drilling Life After Death, and you know other lyrics of his works into my psyche. But yeah, [Lil] Kim, so a bunch of people I wasn’t supposed to be listening to, to be honest. At the Age of 8, 9, 10, but yeah, those. But you know, like I said, I have parents, so that helped me, like, ‘hey, you don’t want to put sprite cans down your throat.’ You know what I mean? Like, no matter what they said in the song, the logistics of that just wasn’t, you know, feasible. Definitely like those two mostly, but of course you know. We’re New Yorkers, so all the New York stuff.
Parle Mag: Let’s jump right into University of Dope, talk to me about creating that. I know you have a business partner, but what’s the the behind-the-scenes story.
A.V Perkins: It started because we were our own target audience, like we were looking for something to play after her and I had dinner one day in Brooklyn. I asked her if she can name all the members of Wu Tang. She said yes. I didn’t believe her because there’s a lot of people in Wu Tang! Like I just completely like blew her off, right? ‘Like, nah, you ain’t got this.’ But then I said, you know, I kind of like doubled down. Could you name them all if you’ve been drinking? And she said yes and I still didn’t believe her, but we thought it be a great game. It was like around, I want to say like September or sometime right after Labor Day. It’s that time before it gets cold where people are just like, really outside, outside, you know what I mean?
Parle Mag: Right, right, right, right.
A.V Perkins: Ohh yeah, and you know those in New York, Brooklyn, they know the air, the air smells like jerk chicken. It’s the remnants of the summer is still with us. So we were actually gonna go and do like hood rat stuff with our friends. But you know, you know how it is sometimes in the city, the days you supposed to link, something happens, and you just don’t. That’s what happened. And so we just decided whatever after dinner, we not gonna go nowhere, so we’re gonna just look up a Wu Tang drinking game because we were sure that it existed. But it did not! So we made it up. So that was a good reason why that worked out. Like we did not get to go out and have epic fun, but we changed our lives that day.
Parle Mag: And what was the process like really creating this? I mean it’s it sounds easy, but I’m sure it’s so much that goes into it.
A.V Perkins: It’s definitely not. Well, the process definitely was not a walk in the park because neither one of us went to school for game development, like that was not something, that was not on our bingo card for that year. And we didn’t even tell anyone, but my family has always been supportive. You know, some people have those stories like, oh, yeah, someone didn’t believe in me… I don’t have that. Thank God. Like it’s very much. Oh, AV says she’s gonna do something. Well, we might as well make room for her because she’s gonna do it. It don’t matter what it is.
Parle Mag: Right, right.
A.V Perkins: What we thought of, we were like, ‘hey, how do we want people to feel?’ Because, you know, people asked us about like having an app or there should be an app, and we haven’t written that out. But we wanted people to feel the nostalgia of their sophomore year in college or wherever they were, when T-Pain dropped “Buy You A Drink.” That is very specific. (laughs) That’s in the manual, that’s in the transcripts, that’s in that because I love that song! And that was also my sophomore year in college. But when that song dropped, it was just pure joy and happiness in a very ratchet way. And that’s how we want people to feel when they play University of Dope.
Parle Mag: Right. And I know the exact feeling.
A.V Perkins: That good ol fun, right? Like that night that we were supposed to go out and didn’t, we wanted people to feel that when they played. Everything else is just like instructions, logistics and stuff like that. So, it’s like, okay, get the feeling down. That’s the branding. That’s the colors, that determines the social, that determines everything. And then you could go into the little intricate details. So, we have something called the University of Dope Algorithm, where there’s only so many times an artist can appear in the game. Because I already told you how I love Biggie and Kim, and obviously they can’t be on every card. We make it so that we spread the love as much as possible. So, after we determined like how we want people to feel and what made sense for us, being completely newbies into this. And it’s not even like we were hardcore gamers either right? Like we were people who casually play games, but I don’t even know how to play spades y’all!
Yeah, I don’t need—keep it to yourself! But I don’t, right. I was not like someone who was an Uno champion or anything like that. So, this is completely like a new venture, you know, professionally and socially. The feeling is what we couldn’t deny, right? And then that’s where, you know, you get into your studying, your R&D (research and development) and all of that other, you know razzle dazzle, business stuff.
Parle Mag: So how long was the process from that night to actually getting a product out?
A.V Perkins: So, it was it was a slow start. It was a slow start because Marian and I both were doing other things. Me being an influencer, doing DIY, my blog, AV Does What, which I’ve since sunset. But I was doing that. She was doing like wedding planning and things like, you know, event planning and stuff like that. You know, life be lifing! So we were distracted. And then eventually, you know, we were like ‘we got to do this for real!’ Right. Because everyone, we talked about it to, they think it’s a great idea too. So Overall, it was almost a year to the day. From the thought, to the prototype was a year, but we really hammered it out in four months.
Parle Mag: OK.
A.V Perkins: So overall, it’s like a year, but concentrating ,and really like we’re doing meetings every night kind of thing, four months.
Parle Mag: The name University of Dope. How’d that come about?
A.V Perkins: Well, back to the recreating of the feeling. Her and I went to college together. The name of our business is called Vance Hall. That’s the dorm where we met at. So, it’s all of these little Easter eggs. If you if you know us and as people get to know us as the founders, you may see those things. So, it’s like OK, we met in college so, University, right? We wanted to do Dope University, but that was taken. So not by a gamer, it just wasn’t available on GoDaddy, one of those sites. But there was Univerisity of Dope, so here we are!
Parle Mag: Have there been challenges since you put it out?
A.V Perkins: Of course, of course, there’s challenges. You know, one challenge being someone tried to take our idea while we were still in crowdfunding! So you learned that lesson, like ohh, thank God that we were legal, right? While we were still in the crowdfunding phase and we used the crowdfunding not to actually fund us, but to, like, garner more like marketing dollars and getting people to know more about it. But if we relied solely on crowdfunding, we would have been in a very hard spot, especially when somebody’s trying to take our game while we were promoting it. That was before even the launch date! So that’s one first obstacle.
Another one, you know, getting our rhythm, getting our groove. So there’s people who have the OG deck, the original, original deck, and there may be people in the game that no longer really make music. So back to the U Dope Algorithm, we learned, yeah, there can only be so many times you’re in the game, but you also have to more or less earn your way into the game, right? Because there are some people who can be—for instance, Desiigner is in the original deck. I think it’s like a rookie of the year type of question. But Desiigner does not make music, and now seven years later. It’s like, wait, is that the guy??? And we’re like, no, see, that’s not going to work for us. So we made it so there are people in the game that either have had a long history of creating music, so we kind of like ended it off like the earliest is like Drake and his incoming class, so Drake and J. Cole, Big Sean, Kendrick, Childish, etcetera. But there are some people who are in the game who may be newer. And that is because they’ve just made an impact like on a social level as well. So think Chance, think Cardi. I think. I don’t know if Megan is just in the game show version or the deck as well, but I think so. But you know socially right? She has definitely made an impact to be in the game. It will take a little bit longer to forget her if she stops making music. And Cardi, I think she can stop making music today, and she’ll be good.
Parle Mag: Right, right. If you could go back to the beginning, is there anything you would change about the process?
A.V Perkins: Not really. And that’s just me thinking. Because I feel like anything else would take more time. Like you know, maybe, maybe in the process, if we were like, OK, we want to do this game and we instead of waiting six months to really like hammer down, do it day one. Right. And maybe the product would have came out sooner, but only by a couple of months.
Parle Mag: In 2022 you got the deal with Target, just talk to me about getting that and what that meant for the brand.
A.V Perkins: So, I mean just you saying it right. It’s an amazing opportunity. It’s always learning curves. Every year there is a new learning curve. There’s always an adventure. There’s always new thing, right? It’s literally like you’re in school, but not just college because this is year seven so we’re graduates and we’re like, it’s always, new curriculum to learn about what you’re doing now. An obstacle that we did have to overcome that kind of helped us out in this process was quarantine. Quarantine happened! We had supply chain issues just like everybody else, and we decided to start the University of Dope Game Show. And with the game show, we streamed it on our social media platform. Facebook and YouTube specifically, and you know everyone’s creating content and we wanted to create more content and so we can still be a top of mind for folks. And a lot of things happened that year. Like you know, you were there, I was there, we were all going through it!
We were right in the middle of a rebrand, right when quarantine hit. And it was like we have to see this through. We got to see this through my boy! So you know, creating the game show that opened up different channels for us economically because we started doing private events and corporate events and then doing more press because people wanted to know, and especially with the uprisings of that summer, you know, everyone wanted to be invested in all types of Black-owned businesses, right? So people were speaking to us and that’s how Target found us, you know, via press. I don’t know which press hit it was. So I’m down for all of the press because I don’t know who’s listening! A buyer reached out to us and then you learn, okay, this is a different! A different game, you know, a different game for sure with going into like big retailers because there’s things that you may not take into consideration until it’s time, so certain insurances right, like if they want large volumes, they’re not going to just pick it up from your basement, right? You need a place for them to pick it up from. You need certain insurances so then that becomes like a whole thing, but they were definitely helpful with the process of getting into this.
Parle Mag: Since then, how much has business changed for you, or what’s been the biggest change since then?
A.V Perkins: Yeah, it’s one of those when you’re scaling a lot of people, you know when we talk about businesses, black-owned businesses, startups and everything. It’s I feel like a lot of conversation and maybe because some people don’t get that far right outside of solopreneurship or things like that, but scaling is a—what’s my favorite word? Shout out to Too short! Scaling is no joke. Then this is where people come to the conversation of, you know Black founders, Black female founders, women founders of other races, not getting funding. Like that’s where we are. And that’s another, you know, a current obstacle, like funding—to get the things that you need to get done. You need funding that is not going to come from sales. Because you think like, oh, if you make money and then the math becomes very elementary. Like that math works in the beginning, but it doesn’t work later. So yeah, you know, being creative and trying to go around those certain obstacles, because we’ve gone through so many before. That’s like the current one.
Parle Mag: I have this conversation with entrepreneurs a lot, just this idea that people from the outside looking in, it always looks so much easier than it actually is and people just don’t understand that. When you think about what your days look like and what the actual business side takes and entails, what’s something you wish people understood.
A.V Perkins: That there is no one thing that is the cure all, right? Some people may think, ‘ohh, you know, celebrities playing’ or, and then this is more specific to us because we’ve had plenty of celebrities play—celebrities playing, you know Target, different press hits. There’s always more to that! You know, to get the things you need to, to, to Get done right. So, we have people working behind the scenes, whether it’s my business partner… I do 99.9999% of the press, but there’s still so much more to make sure this is a well oiled machine. Much like a child, right? Like yeah, you can see their mom, you can see their dad. But there’s always a village member, really helping to make sure this child is as cultivated as possible.
Parle Mag: Now, putting University of Dope to the side for just a bit, you’ve been a Blogger, you’ve been a host, and you mentioned earlier you sunset your blog. Why? Why did you do that?
A.V Perkins: Because I am really annoyed with social media. Even though I’ve sunset my blog, it’s because I never wanted to be like—even when I started, AV Does What? I started it because my father passed away unfortunately, and I needed it to figure out how to navigate through life. So it was literally—my tagline is life is better when you do it yourself, like you have to do your life, yourself. It started as a DIY blog, expanded more into lifestyle and those opportunities. A lot of opportunities came from that and it’s a blessing. And I’m never not a crafter, like forever, you know forever die hard crafter. And I still teach craft classes and everything. But I just never wanted to be like one thing. I don’t want to just be the Hip-Hop girl. I don’t want to just be the craft girl. I’m A.V., and whatever A.V. decides, that’s what it is. My social media handles are still AVdoeswhat, because it’s like, what won’t you get into? And it’s like, who knows, you know, like, I have not ruled out being a youth pastor, right? It’s like whatever I want I can do it, but yeah, it’s sunset. I wanted to speak to my community in a different way.
So yeah, I didn’t want to just be one person. I didn’t want to just do one thing, I wanted to do a bunch of things and now I can speak to my community in different ways. Like I have a newsletter. I started a substack to get more into you know, arts and culture, and things that I like, which includes crafts, which includes Hip-Hop, but it also includes, you know, kayaking and fitness and, you know, being an Auntie. Just different things! I’m still out here. I’m still in these streets, you know. And I’m focusing on hosting. So I do have AVperkins.com. That’s where AVdoeswhat forwards to, to show my range of things that I can do and talk about.
Parle Mag: What? What would you say is next for you? I know you got so many things going on—I know you got so many things going on with the brand, so not those, but for you personally, what’s next?
A.V Perkins: For me personally, I’m just spending more time with my family. That’s really important to me. I’ve never subscribed to hustle culture. I’ve never subscribed to grind culture, and it’s so funny how people’s perception, or I mean of course, you assist in people’s perception of you, right? But then you’re like your perception of yourself. You’re like, no, I don’t! I think it’s because people see me always kind of doing something. What don’t you do right? AV does what, you’re always doing something. People think I’m on my hustle, I’m on my grind. I’ve never even liked those words. Cause what do you think about when you hear the word grind? It’s like, it sounds painful. And it’s like, no, I don’t want to be in pain or anything like that!
For me it’s just making sure I keep my priorities, my values in alignment with who I am, who I perceive myself to be. And yeah, like I said, spending more time with my family is something I really enjoy because it’s little moments that you can’t—that’s all you’re gonna have. You know, when everything is said and done, you know because even if you love your business, you may not be able to run it forever, right. Whether it’s the market or whether you’re just old. (laughs) You know you’re tired or, you know, just whatever. But yeah, I think, you know, like I said, spending time with my loved ones. That’s not even what’s next to me. That’s what’s current. And I just keep on doing that and then just doing things, continue doing things that I love because that’s what led me to do AVdoeswhat. That’s what led me to do University of Dope. You know, having fun is a core value of mine. You know, it’s not even one of those like. Oh yeah, it’s not optional. If something’s not fun, I’m not going, I’m not the one. If its not fun, I’m not going to be there, good luck.
Parle Mag: MMM.
A.V Perkins: Even if I’m doing something where it may not be glamorous, or it may seem hard, but I’m having the time of my life. Someone else might not find it fun, but as long as you have that joy, I think it will reflect in your… In the work that you do produce, the things that you do produce. It also keeps you young. I can’t Be looking crazy. That’s another thing that’s important!
Parle Mag: And you have the 50th anniversary of Hip-Hop Special edition deck.
A.V Perkins: That’s true. It’s all gold everything. Make sure you get yours. It’s currently on sale.
Parle Mag: For people who haven’t played the game yet just give them a quick reason why they need to play the game.
A.V Perkins: Our game is not trivia based, it is majority rules and whoever is in the majority wins the round. So that is a quick and dirty version of the instructions. So let’s say you and I and Someone else were playing and I ask to erase one person from Hip-Hop history, Biggie, Nas, Jay-Z or Tupac. Who would you vote for?
Parle Mag: Tupac.
A.V Perkins: Tupac, All right, so let’s say you and the other person chose Tupac, and I chose Jay-Z. I would have lost that round. And whoever loses the round has to take a Drink of their adult beverage.
Parle Mag: Got it, got it. OK. OK.
A.V Perkins: And then there’s pop quiz questions like two people have a chicken head dance battle. Your peers will determine if you pass and if not, you got to drink. And for those people who don’t drink, like, you know, we’re looking out for you, you know? Swizz Beatz, you can, whoever is in the majority receives 5 points and the first person that gets to 50 wins the game.
Parle Mag: What advice would you have for someone who wants to get into entrepreneurship, wants to start their own, whether it’s a card game or any other business? What advice do you have?
A.V Perkins: Just do it! You can’t know if you don’t try, and also, you’re always going to be tweaking it. So, you can’t let perfection be the enemy of good, because remember, I told you like we loved our product when it first came out. We were so proud, still proud, but Desiigner is in it. So, we had to learn different things and we had to tweak as we went along and it was just like, OK, we got to do this, and how are we going to do that, and expanding and every, every day, every year, there is a new venture. Like now how we’re going more into events, right? We had to pivot, had to pivot from quarantine and we’re still. I mean of course pivot means completely like turn, but you know, be agile with your ideas and work. Netflix, a lot of businesses have been agile over the years. You know, you think about Netflix, they started off with the DVD’s, mailing them to your house and they’re like, OK, people don’t even buy DVD’s anymore? How do we make this work? Streaming, and then they started producing their own, producing their own films. Now who knows what Netflix will be in the next 10 years but, they’re still on their good run now.
Parle Mag: OK, maybe my last point. Because I follow you on social media, you have the some of the hottest takes I’ve seen on the Internet. Some not so hot, but some are just like people should know these things. How did you even come up with that idea? How did it start?
A.V Perkins: I mean, I think. I think it was more so people are always talking about relationships, right? Especially nowadays. I mean, I’ve been on social media for quite some time and ironically when it all started off with these “hot takes” I was being sarcastic initially. Like on Twitter, they always talk about $200 dollars, $200 dollars, $200 dollars and they’ve Been talking about it 15 years now.
Parle Mag: They have!
A.V Perkins: I’m like what? What are y’all talking about, and I remember on Facebook this is about two years ago. I said you know, with inflation it needs to be $350.00 at this point. People were really outraged by that! And then it just kept going. Before, I never even spoke anything about relationships, but there are certain things that I do subscribe to. Like I do subscribe to family. I just had this— just did this Ted Talk about family, right? So, that kind of proves my point here that family is important to me. I grew up with both my parents and my mother stayed home with me. So there were certain things I saw, and I like how I turned out! So that’s the thing, I like how I turned out, and it’s like, OK, if I can take this prototype, which is me, and amplify it right? Cause you just you gotta get things better, you know? Like a system upgrade! And those were certain things that I saw growing up and, you know, could improve upon it now. That’s kind of Like where I’m at with that. I do think men are capable of leading and protecting, and providing for their families.
Parle Mag: I appreciate the time A.V. this was amazing.
A.V Perkins: Thank you so much.
Stay connected with University of Dope online at: universityofdope.com
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