Who is the Woman Featured on Jay Z’s “22 Two’s”?
“Dame Dash let me hear that lil tape of yours, and it’s phat!”
There are many moments on Jay Z’s maiden classic Reasonable Doubt that align the LP among hip-hop’s all-time greatest rap albums. There’s Jay and Foxy’s Bonnie-and-Clyde prequel, the twisted storytelling of “D’Evils,” the remorseful “Regrets.”
But one of the album’s unsung heroines appears on the witty word-player “22 Two’s.” The track is designed as an impromptu live performance hosted by Maria Davis, a former New York City party promoter who ran the Mad Wednesdays showcase in the ’90s. She introduces the song’s star:
Wait a minute; I see my man over there Jay-Z
Jay-Z, Dame Dash let me hear that lil tape of yours, and it’s phat
Why don’t you come up here and kick a lil freestyle
Put that champagne down, and kick a lil freestyle for me tonight
VIBE published an extensive profile on Davis in which she breaks down her involvement with Jay Z’s 1996 masterpiece.
“Well, you know, nobody knew who the hell he was so he was just a regular Joe Shmo to me, he wasn’t Jay Z yet,” she remembers. “Jay Z didn’t really know who I was, it was Damon Dash because I had something valuable—I had a venue.”
“He was coming to Mad Wednesdays and he did this song and it was ‘22 Two’s’—that was like my favorite song. Every time he would come I was like ‘No, Jay, you gotta do that ‘22 Two’s’ thing.”
While the song is best remembered for Jay Z’s dizzying puns using the words “too,” “to,” and “two,” Davis’ closing monologue—in which she boots a rowdy partier from the venue—brings the live feel full circle.
“I was famous for throwing people out of the club when they didn’t act right and they loved that so they wanted that on the record,” she said.
“That whole skit, I adlibbed myself. They didn’t write none of that, I wrote it, it came off the top of my head… If I found or smelled anybody smoking weed, oh my god, party would get shut down, n****s would have to hear a whole Black History Month speech. So they got used to [me] being like ‘Yo, don’t come in her spot smoking weed’ ’cause they was having such a good time and if I smelled weed, shit is shut down.”
While the scene felt like an authentic ’90s night in NYC, the credits reveal that the skit was recorded at D&D Studios.
“They took me in the studio, but everyone thinks it was done at the club,” Davis says. “People be like ‘I was there, I was there,’—they was not there… They asked me to come in and I did the whole skit. And at that time Jay Z was having problems with the law so I threw that up in there… I was just adlibbing cause that’s what was happening at the time. And I’m like, ‘Put that champagne down and kick a little freestyle.’ Who knew that would be so big?”
Read the full feature on Maria Davis, which includes her come up, being shouted out on a song by Jadakiss, and her battle with HIV, over at VIBE.
