10. Jazmine Sullivan - Love Me Back
9. Nicki Minaj - Pink Friday
8. Big Boi - Sir Lucious Left Foot: The Son of Chico Dusty
7. The Roots - How I Got Over
6. T.I. - No Mercy
5. Janelle Monáe - The ArchAndroid
4. Eminem - Recovery
3. Drake - Thank Me Later
2. Rick Ross - Teflon Don
1. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
"Everyone knows Sir Lucious Left Foot is the greatest rap album of all year!"
I really like Sir Lucious. As in REALLY like. When it was released it raised the game for rap and it will likely go down as a classic for the genre. But if you deem Kanye West's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy to be a rap album - to be more precise: an out of this world, legs in the air, best rap album since It Takes a Nation... - then everyone knows Sir Lucious is the second best rap album of the year.
Big Boi's album is awesome, but Kanye's album - while not exactly a "rap" album - is pretty clearly the concensus best whatever album of the year.
Bets since It Takes a Nation though? Illmatic is the best hip-hop album ever. Liquid Swords is pretty great too. The latter is so different than MBDTF though, that it's kind of hard considering them the same genre.