I think that The Left's "Gas Mask" was the album of the year and it wasn't released long ago. Also Celph Titled & Buckwild are pretty much praised by everyone. It's the first album ever that was on top of the charts on Ughh.com for 3 straight months now.
What else? Madlib might be worth mentioning. Same for Ghostface with "Apollo kids", 9th Wonder & David Banner collabo or Termanology&Statik Selektah (though I think that Term couldn't handle the beats on that one).
So yeah, The Left and Celpth Titled&Buckwild had the best albums released over the last few months and leaving my opinion out of this there's been a tough battle amongst hip-hop heads which one of them was the album of the year. Both came certainly as very fine surprises at the very end of 2010.