He is best known for being the first Greek artist to record or re-record the authentic, "prohibited" rebetika songs in the early 1970s with their original lyrics at a time when this type of music was censored in Greece due to the military junta of 1967–1974 in power.

Throughout the 1960s, he performed at well-known venues in Athens with many of the pre-eminent music figures of the time including Stelios Kazantzidis, Marinella, Poly Panou, Kaiti Grey, Manolis Chiotis, Apostolos Kaldaras, Giorgos Lafkas, Giannis Karabesinis, and others.

About the album's impact, Cypriot journalist Nearchos Georgiades wrote: “It is to his credit that he brought these songs back first, and to a large extent to the [Greek music] catalogue, with an inimitable ‘tough’ style and color in his voice, while simultaneously giving them a contemporary sound.

[4] In its February 2023 review, American book publishing website BookLife called it “an entertaining mixed-media celebration of an epochal Greek musician”.

"[7] Journalist Panos Geramanis, a leading authority on the laïká musical style's golden era, wrote in 1999: "Apostolos Nikolaidis was the man, the artist who gave new life to the rebetiko at a time when it was considered to be in decline and its creators and interpreters were officially hunted down by the state as hashish smokers and people of the underworld.