I have had this issue and had to break my head till I finally figured it out, or rather got a whay that worked for me. Try the following
Cursor cursor = activity.managedQuery(playlistUri, null, null, null, " ASC "+" LIMIT 2");
The last parameter is for sortOrder. I provided the sort order and also appended the LIMIT to it. Make sure you give the spaces properly. I had to check the query that was being formed and this seemed to work.