Part of the Language Arts (2008) album.

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Lyrics

Chorus
It’s not fiction
It’s non-fiction
It’s non-fiction, yo we’re keeping it real
Nothing fake, only opinions and facts to reveal

Verse I
When you’re sitting home at your desk
And your thoughts are all a mess
And your brain can’t think any more
And even though your research is done
Your assignment’s just begun, because your
Thoughts are all scattered on the floor
So listen up, pick ‘em up, sort ‘em out, and create an outline
Like a roadmap to direct your prose
And you’ll find if you’re outlining it properly
You’re streamlining the process
You see the rest of the assignment just flows

Starting with the introduction
A paragraph whose primary function
Is to introduce what you’re about to say
And so it should go easy on the length
But establish the strength of
The argument you’re tryin to make
Do you know what a paragraph is?
It’s a bunch of sentences
That express one continuous thought
So now I think you can take it from here
And you won’t have any fear
If you just remember what you’ve been taught!

Chorus

Verse II
In every paragraph you should be finding
A topic sentence shining
Coming at you from a mile away
It’s the one that kicks it off
And you know that it’s always on the ball
About the content that’s about to be relayed.
At every paragraph’s end there’s a sentence that will append
A conclusion to whatever was said
And rather than just ending it there
Instead it’s gonna prepare us
For the content that’s just ahead

Now when you’ve worked through the night
And you’ve written all you can write
You gotta wrap up everything you’ve put down
So you write a conclusion paragraph
That’s the one that comes last
And it should be thoroughly strong and profound
Now after all this, you gotta make a list
Of the articles and books that you used
The list is called a bibliography
It’s what your readers gotta see
Or else they will get unbelievably confused.

Breakdown
Plagiarism—copying what someone else has written
Without admitting—yo that is strictly forbidden
I’m not kidding. That’s like stealing all their wisdom
As your own erudition, that’s a dishonest system
So listen: If you take a phrase from somewhere else
Anything at all that isn’t written by yourself
You gotta use quotation marks around the quote
And then put a citation or a footnote