Ottawa rap artist Alex 'Bender' Buchanan remembered as humble genius

Alex Buchanan was in Grade 3 when a girl in his class brought in a portable stereo and danced to Biz Markie’s Just a Friend for show-and-tell.
It was the first rap song Buchanan had ever heard and it was, he would later recall, “a game changer.”
Buchanan eventually dropped out of high school to write his own rhymes. He moved to Ottawa, developed into a battle rap champion, and launched a successful hip-hop group, Flight Distance, with his friend, Patrick “Patience”