If at first you don’t succeed–well, just keep doin’ that shit.

It seems to have worked out alright for HBO Crew’s Zapper, the man behind one of Atlanta’s premiere b-boy jams–Loose Screws.

Though last year’s event drew in over 600 people, the event maintains the same ideology it did as when it first began as a footwork battle among 19 attendees in 2003.

“It’s no showcases, no bullshit,” Zapper says. “I’ve just been waiting and waiting for this jam. We’re always gonna have really good ciphers. That, to us, is the most important thing. Battles are good, but b-boying was invented in ciphers.”

Zapper credits Mex and the organizers of Triptych Smackdown for teaching him how to throw jams properly. That knowledge, combined with a dogged determination and a constant scheduling, has helped escalate Loose Screws to the level it’s on today.

Zapper recalls that Loose Screws 5, which took place in 2005, was one of his favorites to date.

“We had 300 people show up to a warehouse that was dirty as fuck,” he says. “We had a dance floor that was made out of doors. We took a whole bunch of doors and taped them together. It was the shit.”

It’s a far cry from this year’s event, which begins at 3 p.m. this Saturday at the Relapse Theatre (Click here for more information). This year’s winners will win $1,000 and an all-expenses-paid trip to Montreal.

It’s a prize package that’s drawing a lot of big (but yet unnamed) crews to Loose Screws–which, by the way, has an interesting origin itself.

“We knew it was a footwork battle and all that shit. We had the venue and everything figured out, but we didn’t have a name, ” Zapper says. “My homeboy Element–he was walking down my stairs at my house, and I was on the Internet putting shit on the Internet about the jam. I said, ‘Yo Element, you got any names for jams?’ He said, ‘I dunno, loose screws?’ I don’t know why he said that. I don’t even know if he knows why he said that. That guy’s nuts, dude.”