Regardless of what you think of his music, one interesting aspect of the sociology of this is the extent to which jazz and jazz-adjacent horn players get judged much more harshly on this score than do "rhythm section" players.
For example, it seems to me that jazz cats like George Benson, Earl Klugh, Larry Carlton, Bob James, Stanley Clarke, etc. who have sometimes ventured in a similar direction get a lot more leeway in terms of critical reputation and the ability to weave back and forth between the "serious jazz" world and the more pop-inflected stuff. It seems to be the horn players like Kenny (see also Chuck Mangione, Chris Botti, etc.) that become punchlines and get most of the critical flack.