Lupe Fiasco Launches New Health and Wellness App Higi

South By Southwest Music is officially kicking off later this week. During a stop at Austin’s Hyatt Place, Lupe Fiasco announced his new role as creative director at Higi, which he is assisting in launching a new health and wellness app.

The app calculates a Klout-like score—ranging from 1 to 999—and combines body vitals like blood pressure and weight. It gives extra weight to wellness measures like social interaction and community interaction. Lupe explains that the latter part of the Higi score can help show results in lowering either category.

“When I first checked in I was 160 [pounds] and my score was something like 760. I checked in today, and I was 155, but even though I lost 5 pounds I wasn’t active in my social activity enough and my blood pressure was a little high... It shows you how weight and wellness aren’t the same thing. You can be super fit and super depressed because you’re not interacting with your social network. You could work out and work out, but that doesn’t really translate to how happy you are in life. You could be at home super happy, super comfortable, just logging in to your computer all day, but your body is paying for it.”

Higi will be available as an app for iOS and a kiosk near the pharmacy in stores such as Shop Rite, K-Mart and others. An interesting feature of the app is a photo-tagging feature that allows users to upload images of their meals or their social activities. It then provides suggestions to work it off based on the relative calorie content.

Lupe is excited to hit the ground running with his involvement as creative director. “The dope part about this, other than just being creative director, is adding value to this company, because it adds value to the world," he said.

[via Billboard]